The street owes its name to Robert Hamilton (c.1805 - c.1878) a Norwood gentleman who lived off investments, rents and land speculation and bought chunks of the wild woods of West Dulwich to turn them into prime real estate. Hamilton Road was part of a 12-acre parcel, Bury Grove, which means in old English a fortified place or a manor house. It served as a wooded pasture or a pleasure grove attached to the manorial lands before Lord Thurlow consolidated them in the 1770s. The grove factor was appealing to Victorian surveyors who could lay out wide, straight lines with relative ease unlike the more dense areas of his estate. The road was designed to accommodate substantial rather than purely utilitarian terraces found elsewhere and offered better drainage and views than the marshier lands near the Effra River.