Stuart Mantle Way forms part of the Lesney Farm Estate.
Lesney Farm’s land lay undeveloped until the end of the Second World War. In 1945, Erith Borough Council bought the farm for £24,860 to that it could build the Lesney Farm Estate including Stuart Mantle Way.
Among the first houses to be built were 28 which faced Avenue Road, an existing thoroughfare. The other roads on the estate were new.
Immediately after the war there was an acute shortage of both skilled labour and materials - this often-overlooked fact was the reason that building in the late 1940s throughout the London area was extremely slow by modern standards. The building of the estate commenced on 12 October 1946 but was not completed until 14 September 1949 - one month short of three years.
The road was named after Stuart George Albert Mantle (1890-1945), A wartime mayor of Bexley, he predeceased the design of the estate by a couple of months. Hence his is the only road directly named after a local politician.
