A History of Wandsworth Common
Added
IN PROGRESS — NOTES — NOT FOR PUBLICATION
61, Shelgate Road
Edward Thomas's family home from c.1887? to c.1902?
The Thomas family moved here from Wakehurst Road when Edward was about 8 or 9, and from here to the corner of Rusham Road and Sudbrooke Road in ?, when he was about ?.
Memorial Plaque, 1949
(Click on image to enlarge)
South Western Star - Friday 6 May 1949
(Click on image to enlarge)
[BNA: Link.]
Poet's plaque
A memorial plaque to the memory of Edward Thomas, essayist and poet, will be unveiled at 61 Shelgate Road tomorrow afternoon. Edward Thomas was born in lambeth, but lived with his parents in Battersea. The inscription on the plaque reads "Edward Thomas, 1878-1917, essayist and poet, lived here."
Sponsors of the proposal to erect the plaque include Lord Horder, Walter de la Mere, and Ian MacAlister.
[BNA: Link.]
The poet Edward Thomas was born in Stockwell in 1878 but moved to Battersea with his parents and brother at the age of two. His first home was on Wakehurst Road, which leads up to the Common, and his first school was Belleville. [While at Wakehurst Road his mother presented him with another 4 brothers], and they moved to Shelgate Road when he was about nine. I always think the blue plaque should have been on this first house but for whatever reason it was Shelgate Road that got the plaque in 1949, after the Second World War, and a little over thirty years from his death at Arras in France in the First World War. Edward Thomas's reputation had grown in the 1920s and 1930s, and doubtless his ... as a "war poet" brought about the commemoration. But the contemporary newspaper references are hardly fulsome, as here.
I gave a talk to the Friends of Wandsworth Common last month. The indefatigable John Crossland made a video, which you can view here:
A Recent Talk (February 2024)
For the Friends of Wandsworth Common (8 February 2024).
"Edward and Helen Thomas on Wandsworth Common: Childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood-1878—1902."
Thanks to the marvel that is John Crossland, there's a video — so you can re-live every exciting moment.
(Click on image to see the entire photograph.)
View the video on the Friends website and/or on YouTube.
[The introductory music is Tchaikovsky, Children's Album, "Sweet Dreams", performed by Avril Crossland — thanks, Avril!
Extract from Benedict Mackay's 2018 walk:
Turn left long Webb's Rd where the houses are larger and have a less confined air than in Wakehurst Rd. After a line of shops on the right, cross and turn up Shelgate Rd. Walk up to 61.
From 1888 this was the second Thomas family home in the area. It bears a blue plaque.
"While we were in [Wakehurst Rd] my mother presented me with four brothers at intervals of two years — Being thus seven in family we move to a large house in one of the roads parallel to the old one — the new house had charm. Its size allowed an empty room for us to play in, and a box room — [which] was dark and housed a wooden box containing inexhaustible treasures — chiefly old books, old magazines, old photographs of unknown people. 15
So the ever-growing family had moved to this three-storeyed terraced house for its greater space and it was the birthplace of the youngest boy Julian, his favourite among his brothers. Julian was to accompany Edward on some of his cycling explorations for In Pursuit of Spring.
Edward's first writings as a teenage author were completed here, consisting of articles springing from his observations of the natural world, some curated into his first book The Woodland Life. Such early writing mentions nature rambles on Wandsworth Common as well as in Wimbledon, Richmond, Merton and Swindon.
It was from this house that Edward courted Helen, visiting her father James Ashcroft Noble at The Grove, Balham [PB: No!], and later at Patten Rd. From here, too, he went up to Lincoln College, Oxford and it remained home until he and Helen married and moved to Earslfield and later to 7 Nightingale Parade.
Before that, in this home in January 1900 Merfyn was born up in the dormered attic which the recently married couple had made their own, half study and sitting room, half bedroom. Helen describes the scene vividly at the end of As it was.
HoWC: Benedict Mackay, Edward Thomas Wandsworth Walk, 2018.]
Send me an email if you want to comment on anything you've seen or read on the site, or would like to know more about something, or just want to be kept in touch.
Philip Boys (aka "HistoryBoys")