Home › Building histories › Garratt and Summerstown
– Introduction
– Building Estates
– Garratt & Summerstown: Builders
– Property Deeds: A Random Selection
– Conclusion
– Appendix 1: Landowners & Occupiers in Garratt & Summerstown 1841
– Appendix 2: Garratt & Summerstown — Builders’ Total Output 1860–1910
This paper discusses the transformation of the area bounded by the Wandle and Garratt Lane between the railway bridge at Earlsfield and the Wimbledon boundary, together with a small, relatively isolated cluster of streets south of Burntwood Lane adjoining Garratt Great Green. The study area lay within the medieval manor of Dunsford.
The only settlement in this corner of Wandsworth on John Corris’s Plan of Wandsworth (1787) was a hamlet clustered round the Leather Bottle, first recorded in 1721. Just to the north was Mr Strong’s Oil Mills, which straddled an arm of the Wandle. Corris’s plot 296 included most of the study area, containing 43.62 acres. The mill had begun as a gunpowder mill in 1656, an activity which ceased c.1713. In 1727, Melancthon Strong father and son converted it into an oil and snuff mill, the main activity being the crushing of seeds such as linseed to extract oil. It remained active until a fire in 1890.
In the far south-western corner of Wandsworth was Corris’s plot 297 (6.59 acres), a bleaching ground associated with calico-printing works over the Wimbledon boundary, active by 1776 and lasting until the 1870s. Plot 298 (3.22 acres) was associated with the printing works. Garratt Little Green lay between Garratt Lane and no.298 and contained four acres. Plots 299 and 300 (combined area 2.84 acres) were the Northern and Southernmost Highway Meadows. Plot 301, south-west of Garratt Lane where it makes a double bend, was known as Drunken Bridge Field and covered 7.97 acres.
The only part of the present study area lying east of Garratt Lane is bounded on the north by Burntwood Lane, which marked the boundary of Allfarthing Manor. To the north-east is Garratt Great Green (10.72 acres), now a recreation ground. The total area subject to rapid housing development from the late-1860s to the early-1900s was around sixty-two acres, which when complete contained around 980 houses.
Once again, I owe a debt of gratitude to Philip Boys for prompting me to look in detail at the rural-to-suburban transformation of parts of Wandsworth, and for supplying copies of maps and other documents.
Little change occurred in this part of Wandsworth until the late-1860s, a reflection of its relative distance from the centre of the parish. Given the absence of a railway station at Earlsfield until 1884, any new development in Garratt and Summerstown was aimed at those who worked locally.
The first application for new streets was by Edwin Carter (1825–1904). Burtop Road was approved in November 1868. Carter belonged to a family of market gardeners with substantial holdings in Battersea and Wandsworth. Originally a corn chandler, Edwin became a prosperous auctioneer based in Wandsworth High Street, with two or three resident servants. His estate was valued at £5,123. In February 1869 the streets to the south were approved, comprising Maskell, Hopcroft, Headworth, Rutherford and Bindell Roads. Hopcroft, Rutherford and Bindell were never built, but would have been at the western end of the estate. There was no connection between the streets that were built, which produced a line of culs-de-sac — the least desirable estate layout.
Progress was very slow in the other streets, and only Maskell Road was largely complete by 1894, with short terraces in Headworth and Burtop Roads. In 1894, the estate contained ninety-five houses. Carter’s scheme was finally completed in the early 20th century, with a total of 190 houses.
Another ambitious scheme that failed to live up to the aspirations of its originators was the group of streets north of Burtop Road. On 26th July 1878, the MBW approved an application by Messrs Eykyn & Anstey for Funchal, Highercombe, Martley, Nares, Pringle, Ransom, Siward and Turtle Roads. Little of this grandiose scheme was ever built. Siward and Turtle Roads are two short culs-de-sac off Garratt Lane, whose 2.14-acre plot was no.564 on the 1868 OS Plan. It seems likely that Eykyn and Anstey’s scheme would have covered a substantial six-acre field (no.563) between two branches of the Wandle. Including the Garratt Lane frontage, only thirty-three houses had appeared by the mid-1890s.
At the time of their application, civil engineers John Henry Eykyn and Harry Anstey were in partnership in Westminster. This ended just over a year after their MBW application was approved, on 30th September 1879. Eykyn was born at Funchal in Madeira — hence the choice of name for one of the never-to-be-built streets. His estate was valued at £19,086.
Harry Anstey (1848–1927) was born at Adelaide, South Australia. In 1861 he was at boarding school in Warwickshire. In 1871, he was an ‘engineering & chemistry student’ living in Harley Street. Anstey was apparently not in the UK in 1881 and 1891, which probably accounts for the ending of his partnership with Eykyn, and the premature end to their Wandsworth estate development project. In 1901 Anstey was a ‘retired civil engineer’ living in Chelsea. He died in Marylebone in 1927, leaving a modest estate of £1,924. The failure of the Eykyn–Anstey venture suggests that they had little awareness of the vagaries of the housebuilding industry.
The building boom of the early-1880s produced yet another scheme for this corner of Wandsworth: an estate in the triangle of land bounded on the north by the LSWR embankment and on the south by Garratt House and Mills. In 1868 this comprised two fields (nos.472 and 473), virtually identical in size, covering a total of 7.41 acres. In 1841, both were owned by Charles Reynolds. Surveyor and builder Isaac Seyer’s plan for Skelbrook, Summerley and Trewint Streets was approved on 12th August 1881. Seyer (1841–98) was born in Suffolk; his career had undergone a radical change since 1871, when he had been a clerk at the Church of England Pastoral Aid Society. He died intestate.
The focus of development moved east of Garratt Lane with the approval of an application for Franche Court Road in July 1883. This was apparently a joint venture, with E.C. Chester acting on behalf of Mrs Diana Keatch and R.M. Hiscocks on behalf of J. Mossop. Edward Chester was a solicitor living in Kennington. Mrs Keatch lived at Park Villas in Garratt Lane. In 1881 she was a widowed annuitant with income from house property. Richard Moser Hiscocks (1842–99) belonged to a local dynasty of architects and surveyors — in 1861, his father Alfred was District Surveyor for Wandsworth. Bank manager John Mossop (1831–1907) had come to Wandsworth in the late-1860s. He died at Harrow, leaving an estate of £7,290.
The streets south of Franche Court Road were not laid out until the 1890s. Architect George Herbert Lonsdale Stephenson’s application for Aldren and Burmester Roads was approved by the LCC on 28th November 1893. Stephenson (1859–??) came from Liverpool and was living at Wallington in 1891 and Finchley in 1901, when his household numbered ten plus two servants. His office was in the City. No record of his death has been found.
The next application came in April 1900 from Robert Clifford Thomas Gordon on behalf of Andrew & James Wise, for the grandiosely-named Garratt Park Estate. This comprised an extension to the existing Turtle and Siward Roads plus a new street, Gordondale Road. Gordon (1859–1947) was an architect and surveyor living at West Ham when he briefly became involved in the expansion of Wandsworth.
Andrew Wise (1851–1932) was a builder and contractor, most of whose life was spent in the West Ham area. He lived in Wimbledon in 1901 but had retired to Eastbourne by 1911, describing himself as a ‘retired engineer’. He died at Bexhill in 1932, leaving a very substantial estate of £139,994. His younger brother James (1852–1916) lived for many years at no.20 Earlsfield Road, with two domestic servants. In 1911 James described his occupation as ‘retired contractor’. He died intestate in February 1916. Like several earlier attempts at development in this part of Wandsworth, the Wise brothers’ scheme was stillborn. By 1914, the land had become part of Garratt Park Recreation Ground, established in 1906.
The final piece of the development jigsaw in Summerstown came in January 1902 when the plan of Albert William Iles (1877–1942), son of William Henry Iles, for Keble Street was approved by the LCC. This estate also included frontages on Wimbledon Road and Garratt Lane. It was wholly residential, with 120 houses when complete. Albert Iles has left little trace in the records apart from the impressive total of 98 houses in only three years, 1902–1904.
Just as today, Victorian and Edwardian housebuilding was subject to the fluctuations of the wider economy and especially the availability of capital. As was always the case in Victorian Wandsworth, scores of builders are recorded in the District Surveyors’ Returns (DSRs). In this case, there are seventy-five, an overall average of thirteen per year. Few were large enterprises by contemporary standards.
| Date | Houses | Date | Houses | Date | Houses |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1858 | 1 | 1880 | 4 | 1895 | 7 |
| 1859 | 2 | 1881 | 7 | 1896 | 15 |
| 1862 | 8 | 1882 | 167 | 1898 | 24 |
| 1864 | 2 | 1883 | 57 | 1899 | 13 |
| 1865 | 1 | 1884 | 14 | 1900 | 44 |
| 1866 | 14 | 1885 | 18 | 1901 | 105 |
| 1867 | 16 | 1887 | 32 | 1902 | 39 |
| 1868 | 1 | 1888 | 9 | 1903 | 43 |
| 1869 | 4 | 1889 | 24 | 1904 | 46 |
| 1871 | 8 | 1890 | 19 | 1905 | 7 |
| 1873 | 1 | 1891 | 49 | 1906 | 15 |
| 1876 | 2 | 1892 | 53 | 1907 | 26 |
| 1877 | 1 | 1893 | 3 | 1908 | 7 |
| 1878 | 7 | 1894 | 45 | 1910 | 5 |
| Total | 965 |
When activity finally got underway in earnest in this part of the Wandle Valley, there was a startling increase from an annual average of less than three houses between 1868 and 1881 to what would become the all-time peak in 1882–83, when the District Surveyor recorded 224 houses — almost a quarter of the total. As usual, however, this peak abruptly gave way to reduced activity, reflecting over-building with many houses standing vacant, often for protracted periods. A localised peak between 1891 and 1894 added a further 150 houses.
The southern part of Garratt/Summerstown was close to the contemporary suburban frontier of London, and the Edwardian period saw a localised peak, with 277 houses built between 1900 and 1904 (29% of the total). By 1910, the efforts of builders had replaced the largely rural landscape of 1860 with a densely built-up tract of suburbia. The population of this part of Wandsworth grew from a few hundred in 1850 to more than 4,800 in 1914.
Seventy-five builders worked in Garratt and Summerstown in the half-century from 1860, but the output of a few large builders far outweighed the efforts of dozens of small enterprises (see Appendix 2). The two largest builders each contributed more than one hundred houses: Iles & Wood (189) and F.J. Meech (118), together contributing one fifth of the total. There was a large gap between these men and the five who built thirty to fifty-five houses, totalling 210 (22%). Eleven medium-sized builders, with between eleven and thirty houses, contributed 205 houses (21%). At the bottom end of the scale were the fifty-seven builders of ten houses or less. They accounted for three-quarters of all builders, with a total output of 266 houses (27.5%).
This disproportionate impact of a few large-scale building operations is typical of London’s Victorian and Edwardian suburbia. The armies of lesser builders were always faced by financial realities, given the amount of capital required to erect the houses and the risk of failing to sell or lease them quickly once completed. The following discussion examines in more detail the work of the seven builders or partnerships who built more than thirty houses in Garratt and Summerstown. Their collective output of 517 houses represents 54% of the total.
With 193 houses to his name, William Iles was one of the most significant builders in the Wandsworth area in the late-1890s. In 1881 he was living in St George, Hanover Square, a master builder and head of the firm Iles & Wood, employing fifty men and one boy. (In 1871 he had been a humble house painter in his home city of Bristol.) By 1891, Iles senior had moved to Rosenau Road, Battersea, where he remained in 1901 when he had two servants. Iles died in April 1907, leaving an estate of £35,638.
William Iles was succeeded by his son Albert William (1877–1942), born in Pimlico. In 1901, Albert was a carpenter, progressing to builder by 1911, when he lived at Brighton. He seems not to have prospered and left the building world. In 1921 he was an engineering storekeeper at Hitchin. He had returned to Battersea by 1939, working as a turf accountant’s clerk at the age of sixty-two. He died in 1942.
William Iles’s partner by 1881 and subsequently was Thomas Wood (1835–??), also from Bristol, where he worked as a carpenter in 1861, moving to Haslemere by 1871. In 1881 he lived in Ingrave Street, Battersea, now describing himself as a builder. By 1891 Thomas Wood had been widowed and was living in Huntspill Road. The partnership between Iles and Wood ended in 1895. Wood moved to one of the firm’s houses in Aboyne Road, where his unmarried daughter Florence acted as housekeeper in 1901 and 1911. No trace has been found of Thomas Wood or his daughter after 1911.
Iles & Wood began their long career in the Wandsworth area in 1878, building 216 houses in Battersea between 1878 and 1886. Until 1881, they concentrated in the area around Surrey Lane. Thereafter, attention moved to the recently laid out Crown Estate south of Battersea Park, where they were active until 1893. Iles & Wood’s first foray into Wandsworth was in December 1888, when they gave notice of seven houses in Garratt Lane, two of them including shops. The Iles family built in most years, concentrating in the Aboyne Road area and Tooting, where they built almost 200 houses between 1898 and 1901.
Meech was born at Corscombe, Dorset and, like so many of Wandsworth’s builders, began as a carpenter. He first appears in Wandsworth in 1891, in Bassingham Road. He subsequently lived for many years in Westover Road before retiring to Worthing, where he died, leaving an estate of £11,352. Meech built widely across Wandsworth, Balham and Tooting, some in partnership with an as yet unidentified Mr Goodall, achieving a grand total of 675 houses. Meech & Goodall may also have been the architects of several public buildings in Streatham.
Peters was born in Cornwall and came to Battersea in the 1870s, initially working as a carpenter. He was in Wandsworth by 1881, where he built fifty-three houses in Franche Court Road in 1891–92, having earlier built a similar number further north in Brocklebank Road. In 1911 he was a retired builder. Peters died at Kingston, leaving a considerable estate of £72,252.
Barnes was another builder who built almost all of the houses in a new street — in this case all but six of the fifty-seven houses in Huntspill Road between 1886 and 1890. Born at Portsmouth, Barnes had previously worked in Battersea, where he was a carpenter living in Ursula Street in 1881.
Richmond built thirty-eight houses in 1882–83: eleven in Garratt Lane, twenty in Skelbrook Street and seven in Summerley Street. He had previously lived at Lower Sydenham. In 1881 he was a visitor in Paddington, giving his occupation as ‘builder’. It seems likely that he was the ‘decorative artist’ of the same name who lived in Paddington in 1891. By 1911 he had moved to Hendon, working as a quantity surveyor with one domestic servant. His son gave his occupation as ‘architectural decorator’. John Richmond died at Hendon in 1935, leaving an estate of £2,629.
Every transaction before, during and after the building of any property generates a wide and often voluminous collection of deeds. Their survival is random and a large proportion of those relating to the Victorian and Edwardian era are now lost. Those that do survive throw light onto the individuals involved. All of the deeds noted here are from Wandsworth Archives.
[HOW 58] An auction catalogue from 1913 including 128 freehold and leasehold properties in Garratt Lane, Summerley, Trewint and Skelbrook Streets on the Garratt Park Estate. The sale was conducted by Cuthbert Lake & Co., City auctioneers and surveyors.
[Deeds/1438] A mortgage of 1854, predating the onset of large-scale development. It records a mortgage of two cottages at Garratt between local schoolmaster John Bowman and a calico printer of Merton.
[Deeds/1209] This marks the beginning of the development process with the conveyance of a freehold plot in Maskell Road, dating from May 1869. The vendor is James Griffin of Balham Road and Philip Fenton of Garratt Lane, both styled ‘gentleman’. Fenton was the innkeeper at the Leather Bottle.
[Deeds/66] The conveyance of no.12 Huntspill Road by Edward Pain of Frimley to builders William Iles and Thomas Wood of Rosenau Road, Battersea. Before retiring to Frimley, attorney and solicitor Edward Pain had a connection with development in Battersea going back to the 1840s. The choice of Huntspill — his Somerset birthplace — testifies to his work with Iles & Wood.
[Deeds/67] The conveyance by Iles & Wood of nos.11–14 to Walter Battershall Gill, GP, of Chester Terrace, Regent’s Park, in August 1889.
[Deeds/3645] A conveyance of October 1891, soon after the death of Edward Pain, involving his executors William Bellew and Robert Pain (of Frimley and Exmouth respectively) and Henry Ryland, solicitor of Bloomsbury. The buyers were Iles & Wood.
[Deed/3646] The conveyance of nos.51–56 Huntspill Street by Iles & Wood in March 1893 to Joseph Clayton of Queen Victoria Street in the City.
[Deeds/2726] The reconveyance of no.24 Bellew Street in December 1901 by Frederick Tarling, fish salesman, late of Peckham, now at Herne Bay, and Thomas Wood of no.6 Greenview Villas, Garratt Lane.
[Deeds/1107] A deed of 1921 referring to John William Stanley Burmester (1858–1940) of Queen Anne’s Gate, Westminster, architect and surveyor. Burmester had been in business since the early-1880s and, given that one of the streets bears his name, it seems likely that he was involved in the planning of Iles & Wood’s estate.
While the process of transforming the open fields, enclosures and the grounds of large 18th- and early-19th-century mansions into densely-built tracts of suburbia followed similar trajectories across Victorian London, each building estate had its own characteristics. Initially, the decision to develop was made by landowners who hoped to profit from replacing open land with building estates. As the well-known anonymous verse in Tarbuck’s Handbook of House Property (1875) succinctly puts it:
The richest crop for any field
Is a crop of bricks for it to yield
The richest crop that it can grow
Is a crop of houses in a row
Progress in achieving this transformation was seldom straightforward. The aspirations of landowners for the smooth and above all profitable conversion of their property into serried ranks of streets and houses were frequently frustrated by financial realities, which could prolong development for many years.
In the end, however, the combined efforts of armies of owners, developers and builders did succeed in converting Wandsworth from a largely rural landscape with strips of industry along the Thames and Wandle into a tract of South London suburbia.
| Plot | Owner | Occupier | Area | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 461 | Reynolds, Charles | Lee | 3.67 | |
| 462 | Reynolds, Charles | Reynolds, Charles | 3.70 | |
| 463 | Reynolds, Charles | Reynolds, Charles | 0.12 | |
| 464 pt | Reynolds, Charles | Reynolds, Charles | 0.46 | Oil Mills |
| 465 | Spencer, Earl | Patterson, W J/W S | 0.28 | |
| 466 pt | Spencer, Earl | 0.91 | ||
| 467 | Reynolds, Charles | Reynolds, Charles | 2.14 | |
| 468 | Reynolds, Charles | Reynolds, Charles | 1.08 | |
| 469 | Waste | na | 0.47 | |
| 470 | Reynolds, Charles | Reynolds, Charles | 6.73 | |
| 471 | Reynolds, Charles | Reynolds, Charles | 4.89 | |
| 472 | Reynolds, Charles | Reynolds, Charles | 1.98 | |
| 473 | na | na | 0.04 | 2 cotts. |
| 474 | Spencer, Earl | Patterson, W J/W S | na | 14 hos. |
| 474a | Smith, William | Keetch, Thomas | 0.44 | |
| 475 | Spencer, Earl | Riseley, George | 2.36 | |
| 476 | Spencer, Earl | Riseley, George | ||
| 477 | Spencer, Earl | Spencer, Earl | ||
| 478 | Spencer, Earl | Patterson, W J/W S | na | 4 hos. |
| 479/479a | Young & Bainbridge | Fenton, Elizabeth | 0.45 | PH |
| 480/1/3 | Spencer, Earl | Patterson, W J/W S | 0.80 | 4 hos. |
| 482 | Garratt Little Green | 1.25 | ||
| 487/488 | ?? | ?? | na | 12 hos. |
| 489 | Bennett, Wm/King, Wm | Bennett, Wm/King, Wm | 0.22 | |
| 490 | Wandsworth Parish | see 492 | 6 hos. | |
| 491 | Ewers, Edwd/Dundy Richd | [Highway Meadow] | 1.16 | |
| 492 | Wandsworth Parish | na | 3 hos. | |
| 493–495 | ?? | ?? | na | 3 prs hos. |
| 496 | Wandsworth Parish | Church | na | |
| 497/497a | Stanger, Joshua | [Drunken Bridge Mdw] | 6.75 | 1 ho. |
| 498 | Dutton, Thomas Deeble | late Lewis | 1.77 | |
| 535 | Dutton, Thomas Deeble | Burntwood Lane Close | 7.69 | |
| 535a | Garratt Great Green | 9.19 | ||
| 536 | Dutton, Thomas Deeble | [The Moor Closes] | 6.75 | |
| 537 | Pain, Edward [Moor Cl] | Brown, Geo. [Moor Cl] | 5.46 | |
| 537a | York, Archbishop of | na [Drunken Bridge] | ||
| Total | 70.76 | 49 hos. | ||
| excl. Garratt Greens | 60.32 |
| Builder | Houses | Builder | Houses | Builder | Houses |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Iles & Wood | 189 | Easton Bros. Chas/W | 8 | Robinson Wm & Ward M | 4 |
| Meech, F J | 118 | Elliott, J | 8 | Sampson, John | 4 |
| Peters, W J | 55 | Hiatt/Hyatt, F | 8 | Shearing, J | 4 |
| Barnes, James | 51 | Little, Thomas | 8 | Stanley, J H | 4 |
| Richmond, John | 38 | Newman, C F | 8 | Stennett, H | 4 |
| Pearce, R A | 35 | Robinson, W | 8 | Wall, Edwin | 4 |
| Burrell, A J & Co | 31 | Strong | 8 | Willis & Vodden | 4 |
| Holloway Bros | 23 | Allen, James | 7 | Barnes, E | 3 |
| Sheppard T & Co | 23 | Darby, C J | 7 | East, Messrs | 3 |
| West, Henry | 22 | Gaisford H | 7 | Castle, M | 2 |
| Muncey, H | 21 | Eborall, John & Alf. | 6 | Foster, R A | 2 |
| Munday, C R | 19 | Harris, W | 6 | Hewitt, Robert | 2 |
| Dunstan W & Smith, J | 18 | Newman, P | 6 | Mulliner & Sons | 2 |
| Horlock | 18 | Pascoe & Sons | 6 | Norris & Son | 2 |
| Hocking, A J | 14 | Sadler, Robert | 6 | West, G | 2 |
| Wilson, J R | 13 | Ward | 6 | Boulter, W H | 1 |
| Frederick, R L | 12 | Elton, E | 5 | Castle, J | 1 |
| Rickard, W H | 12 | Frazer, Isaac | 5 | Cusden, J | 1 |
| Eaton, Frank | 10 | Hall, Edwin | 5 | Elms, J | 1 |
| King, H | 10 | Hocking, A J & C | 5 | Garrett & Son | 1 |
| Newman, Edward | 10 | Kennedy, H | 5 | Johnson, W & Co | 1 |
| Syer | 10 | Little, W | 5 | Partridge, J R | 1 |
| Turner | 10 | Brackley, H | 4 | Price, J | 1 |
| Frost, Fred | 4 | Robinson, James | 1 | ||
| Jeffries, D A | 4 | Robinson, R | 1 | ||
| Jenkins, Samuel | 4 | Ronald, R | 1 |
Draft version, July 2025. © Keith Bailey. All rights reserved.