A fairly random collection of pieces relating to Wandsworth Common and its surroundings. The origin of many of the articles is personal correspondence, but also what you might call "road kill" - accidental collisions with unexpected stories when you're looking for something completely different. Happily, the metaphor is reversed - in that what might have remained dead stories are thereby revived or resurrected from oblivion by virtue of the accident, which is one of the very nice things about doing any kind of historical work.
I'd prepared far far too many slides to look at and too many things to talk about, so a follow-on to complete the story is planned for a month or so's time.
I started with a summary of the Wandsworth Common Act 1871, and ran through the Parliamentary timetable February-July 1871. I reprised my earlier Carve Up account of how the Common was cut into fragments by roads and railways, and then built over. We looked at some images of Earl Spencer (paintings, caricatures, engravings, photographs) and I ran through ultra-Protestant James Lord's 1869 article in the Irish press arguing that Spencer's appalling treatment of Wandsworth Common was a warning of what he would do to Ireland.
John Buckmaster's turn came next - how he came to Battersea, how he married and bought a house in New Rd near the developing Clapham Junction station. I told the story of the two gravel diggers, the letters to the press, the early mass meeting on the St Mark's triangle (23 August 1867), followed by attempts to raise money to fight a court case (Henry Peek et al), and so on. I mentioned Punch writer Tom Taylor's poetry to the rescue.
At this point it became obvious that I'd run out of time yet there was still a long way to go. It's been suggested that there should be another talk to finish off. I'm delighted. My only fear is that I will double the amount of detail in the second talk, so I will then have to do yet another - and so on, ad infinitum. Yet another demonstration of Zeno's Paradox.
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