Twyckenham and Ridgedale: the Erskine ground

1920s — present

The south side's defining ground was one industrialist's estate: Albert Russel Erskine, Studebaker's president, built his estate Twyckenham on some six hundred acres — "some 600 acres of wooded, rolling country at the south edge of the city, and most of another section," in the Ornaverum family history's account — in the 1920s, and developed the adjoining ground as a residential suburb: "Ridgedale, a real estate development adjoining his estate, Twyckenham, on the north, was a great undertaking started by Mr. Erskine several years ago," the South Bend Tribune's obituary of 2 July 1933 records, in the same account that carries his gift of the 120-acre park and golf course. The estate's name traveled down the map: the road to it became Twyckenham Drive, and the modern neighborhoods of the ground are Twyckenham Hills — whose neighborhood association stands in the city's framework, its pocket park a 2025 IGNITE project — and Erskine Manor Hill, off Twyckenham Drive south of Ewing Avenue, which carries the estate's name in present realty usage.

The name's origin is tradition with a named carrier, and prints as such: the Tribune's local historian Aaron Helman, writing in August 2026, tells it whole — Huntsville, Alabama, Erskine's native city, was founded in 1809 under the name Twickenham, for the birthplace of Alexander Pope, and renamed Huntsville as too pretentious; Erskine named his South Bend estate "Twickenham Park" after it; and the road's present spelling, Twyckenham with a y, is, in Helman's words, "a spelling he never explained." No document of Erskine's own naming the estate stands in the record reached; the account is printed at the strength of its carrier, a newspaper historian's well-told story, not a deed.

Sources:

1. South Bend Tribune, obituary of Albert R. Erskine, 2 July 1933 (the Ridgedale development and the park gift); Tribune, August 2026 — Aaron Helman on the Twyckenham name
2. Ornaverum family history — the Twyckenham estate's acreage
3. City of South Bend, IGNITE announcement (2025) — southbendin.gov