The History of Wandsworth Common

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Last modified: 16 October 2026

Wandsworth in the 1860s
The Ordnance Survey six-inch map

The first edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map (1:10,560), joined from four sheets into one. It runs from Chiswick, Barnes and Richmond Park in the west to Lambeth, Camberwell and Dulwich in the east, and from Hammersmith and Chelsea down to Wimbledon, Merton and Streatham. Wandsworth Common sits near the middle, with open fields still all around it: most of the streets that now surround it had not yet been laid out.

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Drag to move; scroll, pinch or double-click to zoom; the buttons at the top right zoom in and out, return to the whole map, fill the screen, and (the arrow) take you back to the top of this page; the small map at the bottom left shows where you are.

The map. The Ordnance Survey’s first six-inch map of the London area, at six inches to the mile. The ground was surveyed in the 1860s (Surrey sheet VII in 1865, sheet VIII by 1870) and the sheets were published around 1870–74. This composite joins four of them: Surrey VII and VIII and Middlesex XXI and XXII. The joins have been made as closely as the old paper sheets allow, and the sheet borders taken out.

Part of a series. One of a series of maps of the same ground at different dates. See also the Ordnance Survey 25-inch map of the 1860s, which shows the area around the Common in much greater detail, and the Geographia street map of 1937.

Prepared by Philip Boys, with Claude.

Build 4.