Bolina Road and the similarly exotically named roads around it – Zampa Road and Senegal Road – were developed after replacing market gardens in the 1860s. It was part of an industrial landscape that grew up the local railway lines
Charles Booth visited the area in 1899, writing:
“This is a small D-shaped portion known as Hobman’s Estate, and comprises: Zampa Road, Bolina Road, Haydock Road, Erlam Road, Stockholm Road. All 2-storey houses with bows on first floor and ground floor, small iron-railinged fronts, small backs to which the top storey has access by special flight of stairs. All lived in by two families with four rooms to a floor. Let at 7/- each. Rents paid weekly. No bathroom. Quiet and respectable. Fairly broad streets with occasional trees on the pavement. The streets are paved with a special composition of tar and crushed stone made in Hobman’s factory in the Stockholm Road. Hobman makes the playgrounds for the School Board. He is also a manufacturer of Puppy biscuits which he makes at the east end of the Stockholm Road. He both owns and has built all the houses on this estate”.
The terraces were still in existence in 1950 but were demolished sometime after. The Surrey Canal Road was filled in and replaced with Surrey Canal Road in 1980.
In the 1990s, Millwall FC moved its ground to Senegal Fields where the terraced houses of Senegal Road once stood.
