Timothy Walker Notes

Page 24 — Map 3

Map 1 shows how the area considered in this book fits into south west London as a whole. Its boundaries are Clapham Common West Side on the east, Battersea Rise on the north, Bolingbroke Grove (and Wandsworth Common) on the west and Nightingale Lane on the south. The two commons are separated by a valley where the Falcon River used to run on its way to the Thames. The four roads are shown in John Rocque's map of Surrey published in 1745 (Map 2) but they go back much further in time. This is only the first example of how the detailed geography of this part of London reflects, even to the smallest of bends, the various roads and estates which existed long ago. For a long time, the area was described as South Battersea and it is only in the last twenty years that estate agents have renamed it 'Twixt the Commons'.

Map 3: Parishes and postcodes. Map showing Battersea, Clapham, and Streatham, with "Clapham Detached" outlined, and the SW11/SW12 postcode boundary marked.

While the boundaries of the area are clear and have remained unchanged for many hundreds of years, its name and the administrative unit in which it falls have been much less constant. The names Battersea, Clapham and indeed Balham, were used in many different ways at different times and often for overlapping or even the same areas. The most important members of the 'Clapham…

Source: Timothy Walker, 'Twixt the Commons, p.24. Used with the author's permission.

Page 25

…Sect' lived in the parish of Battersea; part of the parish of Clapham was entirely separate from, and unconnected to, the rest (hence called 'detached') and located south of Nightingale Lane in what now seems more naturally part of Balham. These shifting boundaries are shown in Map 3.

Sometimes the names were chosen in order to mislead; it is alleged by Railway Magazine that the railway station Clapham Junction, which is manifestly in Battersea, was so named in the 1860s as a cynical marketing ploy. Bradshaw used to include a footnote in its timetable to warn travellers that it was 1½ miles from Clapham. It is perhaps significant that the current estate agents' appellation of 'Twixt the Commons' makes no explicit reference to any of the established geographical areas, perhaps to avoid any reference to 'South Battersea'.

There have been numerous changes to administrative boundaries since the middle of the nineteenth century, reflecting fluctuating populations and changes to local authorities. Battersea escaped Wandsworth to become a metropolitan borough in its own right in 1888 and was merged back into Wandsworth in 1963 when the Greater London Council (GLC) was created. Balham was split up at the same time, some parts remaining in Wandsworth and some going to join Streatham in Lambeth. The excellent book 'The Buildings of Clapham'¹ includes South Battersea and part of Balham in its coverage, even though they were not part of the original parish of Clapham, on the grounds that the authors 'think present residents consider that they live in Clapham.' For the similar, but opposite, reason, they exclude most of the detached part of the Clapham parish.

The westernmost part of Clapham Common had always been claimed by Battersea but this was challenged either in principle or in practice by Clapham residents. This led to many boundary disputes in times gone by and even now the story may be told differently by the two sides. The boundary had, at least since the fifteenth century, been marked by a ditch that ran from the southern corner of Wix Lane to the corner of the South Side of the Common and Nightingale Lane. Over time, this ditch became less obvious and the Clapham farmers allowed their cattle to graze on both sides of it. In 1716, Battersea residents erected a long bank and ditch to prevent their Clapham counterparts from grazing their cattle on the Battersea part of the…

Source: Timothy Walker, 'Twixt the Commons, p.25. Used with the author's permission.

Page 26

…common. The ditch was promptly filled up and the rampart levelled, not least because Battersea had taken the opportunity to move it six feet further towards Clapham than the old one. A subsequent action by Battersea for trespass failed but its parishioners continued to include the extra land when they beat the bounds of the parish on Ascension Day each year. The boundary is still set out by cast iron boundary markers, placed at intervals along the Common.ⁱ

Old Park Avenue is named after the Georgian house, Old Park, built on a substantial estate developed for terrace housing during 1870-1901. The house itself was only knocked down in 1890 and Old Park Avenue constructed on what was left of its grounds. The road lies in the southern part of the original parish of St Mary's, Battersea, putting it on the Nightingale Lane edge of South Battersea or 'Twixt the Commons'. The south of the borough was developed later than the north, which had always been more intensively built on, catering for the less well paid working class. The difference was always important and an advertisement of an auction in Battersea in The Times in 1790 made clear that the house to be sold was 'in the preferable part of Battersea'.

The variation of geographical label described above applies equally to Old Park Avenue. What was the Old Park Estate, always clearly in the parish of Battersea, was described at the time of its creation as being in Clapham and is now part of the Balham ward of the Battersea parliamentary constituency. Unlike the majority of 'Twixt the Commons', it is in the post code SW12. This is because the boundary between SW11 and SW12 is the more northerly Thurleigh Road, rather than Nightingale Lane, the original boundary between Battersea and the detached part of Clapham, and subsequently between Battersea and Balham/Streatham.

The confusion of names alone suggests that a proper understanding of the development of South Battersea requires a consideration of all three related areas, Clapham, Battersea and Balham. This is all the…

i It may be that it was the setting of this boundary that caused part of Clapham parish to be detached. There are some earlier maps that show the boundary between Clapham and Battersea running along the west side of the common, and then down the centre of Nightingale Lane and round the 'detached' part to connect it securely to the whole.

Source: Timothy Walker, 'Twixt the Commons, p.26. Used with the author's permission.

Page 27

…more so because substantial building development did not begin there until well into the second half of the nineteenth century by which time many of the underlying patterns had been set. This chapter describes the limited number of houses that were built before the end of the eighteenth century and the people who lived in them.

Early Development

The early history of Clapham is set out in Michael Green's book 'Historic Clapham'.² The name stems from the Anglo Saxon, the earliest reference being to Cloppaham in the late ninth century. Anglo Saxon records also demonstrate the existence of an estate, or part of an estate, which corresponds exactly to South Battersea or 'Twixt the Commons'. It was called Hildeburna, after the former name of the Falcon Brook.

The Manor of Clapham (but no church) appears in the Domesday Book when it was held by Geoffrey de Mandeville. The church, the precursor to the present Holy Trinity, seems to have been built towards the end of the twelfth century and then acquired by Merton Abbey. Having got the church, the Abbey wanted to make something of it. Green suggests that the Abbey contrived to change the pilgrimage route from the west to Canterbury from its traditional route along what is now Lavender Hill and Wandsworth Road to run along what is now Northside Wandsworth Common, Battersea Rise and Northside Clapham Common. Pilgrims would thereby have to pass their Clapham Church where penances could be obtained in return for gifts and indulgences could be purchased.

Before the mid seventeenth century, this part of London had very few inhabitants. Henry Atkins, the physician to James I, bought the Manor of Clapham for £6000 in 1616³ and by 1638 the village of Clapham only had 46 ratepayers. The first house on the north side of Clapham Common was built in the 1660s by Denis Gauden and was described by Samuel Pepys⁴ in his diary in 1663.

'Resolved to go to Clapham to Mr Gauden's. When I came there, the first thing was to show me the house, which is almost built. I find it very regular and finely contrived, and the garden and offices almost as convenient and as full of good variety as ever I saw in my life.'

Source: Timothy Walker, 'Twixt the Commons, p.27. Used with the author's permission.

Page 50 — Round the Common in 1800

Round the Common in 1800

Clapham had certainly changed during the eighteenth century. Its population had increased from 600 in 1664, to 1,625 in 1774, and some 3,000 in the early 1790s and would almost double again over the next twenty years. By this time there were about 240 houses in the parish of Clapham, 23 large houses in South Battersea with some smaller dwellings concentrated around the junction of Battersea Rise and the Falcon brook. At least eleven stage coaches a day ran to London from Clapham, including to both City and West End. The corresponding increase in building is reflected in the steady increase in the total rateable value of Clapham property, and the even faster increase in the sums raised for the Poor Rate!⁵⁹

POOR RATE
Year	Rateable value (£)	Poor rate collected
1700	2830	47
1753	4207	316
1775	7024	966
1784	—	1,187

Clapham's growing wealth is also illustrated by the sum of almost £2,177 collected as an alternative to Rates for the Loyalty Loan and sent to the Government on 13 March 1798 to help pay for the prevention of invasion by Napoleon.

Two views of the Common around this time are shown in Ill 6 and 7, while Ill 8 shows the Spring Well that provided water until 1825. The many fine houses built around Clapham in the eighteenth century are illustrated in Map 4 of 1800 which shows the perambulation of the Common with 'the Gentlemen's seats and the names of their occupiers'.

Source: Timothy Walker, 'Twixt the Commons, p.50. Used with the author's permission.

Page 58

Virtually all of Battersea and Clapham is given as pasture, with some arable land in Balham and both market gardening and meadows towards the river. The area was still famous for its asparagus, sold in 'Battersea bunches' and the Spirit of the Times wrote in 1802⁶⁷:

'Gardeners in shoals from Battersea shall run
To raise their kindlier hot-beds in the sun'

It is not surprising that the 1801 census described the majority of the Battersea residents as engaged in agriculture activity or in small enterprises along the Thames, often themselves related to agriculture.

The country nature can be illustrated by the two pubs on Lavender Hill which was of course the main road from London to Portsmouth. The original Plough Inn on St John's Hill was built in 1701 but replaced in the 1880s, with the most recent one having been demolished in 2008. John Pilditch, the Battersea District Surveyor, described the old pub in a speech given to the Bolingbroke Ratepayers Association in 1895⁶⁸.

'The old building was surrounded with garden ground well stocked with trees, etc, and had all the appearance of an old fashioned country roadside inn. At the side of the house was a spacious covered building, open at the front, and provided with seats and tables, in which country wayfarers and weary travellers would rest and take refreshments. In front of the doorway was the remains or trunk of an old tree which was used as a lamp post. It is said that Dick Turpin used to fasten his horse to this tree when he rested for refreshments. Poultry used to roam about in front of the building, giving it in all respects a country appearance'

He also remembered the former Falcon Inn, whose sign commemorates the falcon in the crest of the St John coat of arms, and is located at the junction of Falcon Road and St John's Hill.⁶⁹

'It stood back from the roadway some distance and not in the position of the present house which was erected on an advanced line since 1882. In the olden times the old house was essentially a country house standing in the midst of…

Source: Timothy Walker, 'Twixt the Commons, p.58. Used with the author's permission.

Page 59

…country and surrounded by green fields and trees. Falcon Road and St John's Hill being at that time in all respect country roads. I am unable to give the date when the old house was erected but I find that it was offered for sale by a Mr Smith at Garroway's Coffee house on 23 March, 1803, as the freehold estate of the late John Sewell. At that time the house was in the possession of a man named Robert Death, a peculiar name for a publican and it was largely used by undertakers and mourners on their return from attending funerals, and there is a famous picture of the house in existence, entitled 'Undertakers regaling themselves at Death's Door.'

This story is told in more detail by Robert Chambers in his 'Book of Days'⁷⁰.

'In the last quarter of the eighteenth century, there flourished at the corner of the lane leading from Wandsworth Road to Battersea Bridge a tavern yclept The Falcon kept by one Robert Death — a man whose figure is said to have ill comported with his name, seeing that it displayed the highest appearance of jollity and good condition. A merry-hearted artist, named John Nixon, passing this house one day, found an undertaker's company regaling themselves at 'Death's door'. Having just discharged their duty to a rich nabob in a neighbouring churchyard, they had… found an opportunity for refreshing exhausted nature; and well did they ply the joyful work before them. The artist, tickled at a festivity among such characters in such a place, sketched them on the spot. This sketch was soon after published, accompanied by a cantata from another hand of no great merit, in which the foreman of the company, Mr Sable, is represented as singing as follows, to the tune of 'I've kissed and I've prattled with fifty fair maids':

Dukes, lords, have I buried, and squires of fame'
And people of every degree;
But of all the fine jobs that ere came my way,

Source: Timothy Walker, 'Twixt the Commons, p.59, quoting Robert Chambers, Book of Days. Used with the author's permission.

Page 61

A funeral like this for me.
This, this is the job
That fills the fob;
Oh! The burying a Nabob for me!
Unfeather the hearse, put the pall in the bag,
Give the horses some oats and some hay;
Drink our next merry meeting and quackery's increase,
With three times three and hurra!'

Ill 9 shows a print from Nixon's original drawing in 1801.

This was not the only poem written about Robert Death and the following makes even more play upon his name⁷¹.

'O stop not here, ye Scottish wights,
For purl nor ale not gin:
For if you stop, who e'er alights
By Death is taken in.

When having eat and drank your fill
Should ye, O hapless case,
Neglect to pay your landlord's bill
Death stares you in the face.

With grief sincere I pity those
Who've drawn themselves this scrape in
Since from this dreadful gripe heaven knows
Alas! there's no escaping.

This one advice, my friends, pursue
Whilst you have life and breath —
Ne'er pledge your Host, for if you do
You'll surely drink to Death.'

In the next chapters, we will see how much these country scenes changed in the nineteenth century.

Facing page, Ill: "UNDERTAKERS regaling themselves at DEATH'S DOOR, Battersea Rise SURRY"

Source: Timothy Walker, 'Twixt the Commons, p.61. Used with the author's permission.

[Chapter opening] — South Battersea. The Start of Development

SOUTH BATTERSEA. THE START OF DEVELOPMENT

The pattern of development seen in the last chapter for the area as a whole is repeated in South Battersea but some tens of years later than for Clapham itself. That is: first the building of large houses with estates for the wealthy, then gradual replacement by smaller villas for the upper middle class, and finally rows of terrace or semi-detached housing. In South Battersea, most of the large houses were in place by the mid nineteenth century at the latest, whether on Bolingbroke Grove, Battersea Rise or the west side of Clapham Common. Their gradual replacement and the growth of the population sometimes followed and sometimes stimulated improved transport. The very rapid net overall growth of the population conceals movement in different directions both into and out of London and which need to be understood to explain the change from Georgian to late Victorian suburb. An outline of this development between 1851 and 1900 is given in Roger Logan's 'South Battersea' reprinted as 'Between the Commons' in 2007¹.

In the middle of the nineteenth century, South Battersea, or its modern name 'Twixt the Commons', was still semi-rural. There were only a few houses around its periphery; five along what was becoming known as Bolingbroke Grove; one on the Battersea side of Nightingale Lane; seventeen on the West Side of Clapham Common; and five on Battersea Rise. Broomfield House, later to be renamed Broomwood, was the only one in the middle. Almost all the houses had been built or extended in the last quarter of the eighteenth century and no more than two or three substantial houses were built in the first half of the nineteenth century. There were still a number of working farms with associated cottages. A stream, known from the seventeenth century as the Falcon Brook, with sources rising in both Balham and Tooting,² still ran into the Thames above ground in its valley between the two commons. This name, as for the pub and…

Source: Timothy Walker, 'Twixt the Commons. Used with the author's permission.

Page 120 — Map 6

…road, stemmed from the crest of the former Lord of the Manor, St John, a falcon rising.³ The brook was covered in and used thereafter as a main sewer in 1869. This is captured in Map 6, produced in 1862 by Stanford.

Map 6: Stanford map 1862

Although the houses had remained unchanged, that does not mean that the occupants did. Merchants and bankers, or their families, did not have the same emotional ties to property as the aristocracy, who traditionally depended on the income from land and had — or believed they had — long standing and permanent ties to a locality. There is no example of entail around the Clapham area; indeed there were many substantial families who were content with a long lease. For the rich of Clapham, property was no different from any other investment. They moved elsewhere when it suited them.

Source: Timothy Walker, 'Twixt the Commons, p.120. Used with the author's permission.

Page 167 — Remaining development

Remaining development

This section runs quickly through the remainder of the development in South Battersea, which continued briskly over the last two decades of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth. It is, of necessity, fairly detailed and those more interested in the analytic part than in how their particular road came into being could skip to the next section.

In July 1880 approval was given for the largest estate development then proposed in South Battersea. This was for the 41 acre Broomwood Park Estate which consisted of what Erskine Clarke called 'charmingly wooded meadows and shrubberies'. The estate was approached by a narrow lane 'fringed with gnarled and twisted oak'³⁵ which was eventually widened to become the eastern end of Broomwood Road and part of Kyrle Road and entered Clapham Common between Broadlands and Leveson Lodge. Formerly occupied by Wilberforce, it was then lived in at time by Sir Charles Forbes. The grounds were substantial running from Thurleigh Road to Chatham and Darley Roads and from about the present Wroughton Road to the Falcon Brook. The estate had grown further since Forbes had bought the corresponding slope up to Bolingbroke Grove which had belonged to one of the original five houses, The Elms, last lived in by Charles Lambert, a cigar merchant and cofounder of Lambert and Butler with a factory in Battersea. At the end of Webbs Road — then called Mud Lane — there were high boarded gates leading into the Broomwood fields owned by Forbes and no public right of way. This caused some difficulty for Erskine Clarke since it made longer the journey from his house in Altenberg Gardens to St Luke's. Sometimes he avoided this through the good services of Mr Holmes, Sir Charles Forbes' gardener and father of the verger at St Luke's, who would let him out at the estate's Chatham Road gate.

The estate was bought for £43,000 by John Cobeldick, a Cornish born land agent and builder living in Stockwell. The development resulted in the early demolition of The Elms, its site to be crossed by Honeywell Road although Broomwood House was retained until 1904 when William Wilberforce's former presence was recorded in a brown plaque on the east wall of the corner house with Wroughton Road. There followed the construction of Honeywell, Broomwood…

Source: Timothy Walker, 'Twixt the Commons, p.167. Used with the author's permission.

Page 170

Ill. 33: examples of 196-222 Broomwood Road

The final approval in this decade was for the development in 1890-96, again by Henry Corsellis, of the estate of the Rev John Pincher Faunthorpe, the Principal of Whitelands College, Chelsea who moved out to a house overlooking Bromley Common. He had married Elizabeth Champion's companion, Charlotte Blackman, who had been left a life interest in the house. There had been previous attempts to extend Northcote Road directly to Thurleigh Road or even as far as Nightingale Lane, but this was finally rejected in favour of the existing position which places Montholme Road in an offset position so the gardens on the west side of the road run down to the Falcon Brook. Faunthorpe's estate provided the land for this final piece of Northcote Road together with Bramfield and Kelmscott Roads.

Thus, by the turn of the century, South Battersea was laid out, but not fully built, on all areas except those closest to the West…

Source: Timothy Walker, 'Twixt the Commons, p.170. Used with the author's permission.

Page 178 — The five houses

…the corresponding ones were for, say, the Dulwich Estate, they have had a lasting effect by influencing the type of houses built, most of which remain. Many of the freeholds (and hence the ground rents) in these roads were owned by the Governors of Queen Anne's Bounty and it has therefore been possible to examine many of the original deeds which run to some 55 pages for each estate and give at least a partial account of the history of the development.

The five houses

In the eighteenth century, a small number of houses were built on the east side of Wandsworth Common and on the part of Battersea Rise closest to the Falcon Brook, although in most cases it is difficult to establish the exact date of their construction. The land, at least from 1763, was largely owned by Earl Spencer but as we have seen he was starting to sell pieces of it. The houses were occupied by people of wealth and, often, of distinction. Apart from Isaak Ackerman, the former owner of Battersea Rise House, three of the landowners were Thomas Astle, the antiquarian, Robert Lovelace, a partner in Childs' Bank, and Robert Dent who became a partner in the same Bank only three years after Lovelace.

Robert Dent first appears in the Battersea rate book in 1767 and his own account book shows that he bought a further 88 acres from Earl Spencer and Thomas Parker in February 1773 for £5,650, building a house on that land in 1776 for which he paid the builder, Richard Morris £5,496/7/0. Over the next twenty five years he was involved in a number of land deals in Battersea, both selling and buying, resulting in three large estates, two smaller ones, and five substantial houses along what became known as Bolingbroke Grove, together with a couple of farms and associated cottages. Lovelace, who owned the land on the Clapham Common side of the Falcon Brook, sold it in 1797 to the owners of the first four of the houses on Bolingbroke Grove, allowing them to extend their plots across the stream. After these transactions, the pattern of land ownership remained almost unchanged for 60 years and the result is shown in Map 10, based on the 1836 Tithe Map.

Facing page shows Map 10, labelled with "Mary Dent," "Robert Dent," and "John D[ent]" over a plot plan fronting Nightingale Lane, plus a photograph of one of the houses, captioned in part: "…The five houses g[ave…] were described as 've[ry…] overlook the common[…] show two of the hous[es]"

Source: Timothy Walker, 'Twixt the Commons, p.178. Used with the author's permission.

Page 207 — The Dents and Old Park Estates

Following Mary's death in 1867, her unmarried cousins who had inherited the estate were already well into their sixties and living in comfort in or around Bryanston Square in the West End. It must have made sense to them to realize the capital and the whole estate (then given the title Wandsworth Common estate) was offered in lots for sale in June 1868 by Messrs Chinnock, Galsworthy and Chinnock as shown in Map 13.

The new roads proposed on the map (which had not had official approval) are not the same as those that were eventually built. At first sight it may seem odd that the proposed new road along part of the Falcon Brook does not continue along it the whole way but this is explicable in terms of the land boundaries. Where the estate owned the land on both sides of the Brook, it made sense for a road to run over the Brook (by then covered and converted into a sewer) with houses on both sides, corresponding to the pattern adopted in Northcote Road. However the Brook was the boundary with the Old Park Estate and clearly it was not possible to lay out a new road along this line without reaching agreement with the other owners. As a result the proposed plan displaces the road to allow a house with a garden running down to the Brook. In any case Sir Charles Forbes, the owner of the adjacent Broomwood estate, bought the land on the east side of Falcon Brook and in August 1872, the Dents sold the remainder of the land to John Galsworthy for £15,528. Map 14 gives a good idea of the resulting layout with the Dents House at the north east corner; the farm buildings further south show a path running down to the bottom of the valley which eventually became the top part of Thurleigh Avenue.

Galsworthy was a Kingston solicitor as well as an auctioneer and was clearly speculating in his own right. He sold the Dents House — confusingly called Bolingbroke House in the deeds — together with just over five acres of land to John Eldon Gorst in 1874 and the remaining 21 acres to Charles Appleby the next year for £17,790/15, making a tidy profit in the process.

John Gorst lived in the house on Bolingbroke Grove until about 1881. As well as being a successful QC — we have already seen he was chosen to represent the Crown at the inquest of Charles Bravo in Balham — he had been the Tory party's central agent helping to mobilise the enlarged urban electorate to secure the Tory 1874…

Source: Timothy Walker, 'Twixt the Commons, p.207. Used with the author's permission.

Page 208 — Map 14

Map 14: Residual Dent's estate, 1872. Map showing the boundary of the residual Dent's estate, labelled with "Sir Charles Forbes" at the north end, "Bolingbroke Grove" and "Wandsworth Common" to the west, "Clapham Old Park Estate" to the east along the "Main Sewer" line, and "Nightingale Lane" along the southern edge. Caption below reads: "Copy Plan on Chairmans to J. Galsworthy, Esqre dated 24th December 187[?]"

Source: Timothy Walker, 'Twixt the Commons, p.208. Used with the author's permission.

Page 214 — 'Twixt the Commons

Ingram and Bragg used a well known local architect, Charles Bentley, who often worked with Heaver, and was well used to getting as many high class houses on a site as possible. He moved what is now Hendrick Road closer to Falcon Brook to reduce the gardens, and offset it from Blenkarne Road, while introducing three new east-west roads, Roy, Granard and Morella. Roy Road ran down the hill from Bolingbroke Grove in the same line as Thurleigh Road and the developers had planned it to stop there with Estcourt (Hendrick) Road being built across it. This gave rise to another of Erskine Clarke's interventions and he was just in time to purchase the site of two houses for £100 and use it to join up Roy and Thurleigh Roads. His purpose was 'to give direct and easy access to St Luke's from all the district' and this secured access to the west of its parish. Map 16 shows the result.

Ingram and Bragg started Granard Road in 1882 and built Morella Road, Bolingbroke Grove and Nightingale Lane from 1883-5. They continued to use Charles Bentley to design all the houses, except those built by David Kettle in Bolingbroke Grove. For the first road to be built, Granard, they used only one builder, J T Robertson (who by 1891 lived himself in No 33 with his six children under 11), but for Morella Road, which started the next year, four different builders were used. Bragg obviously got on well with Robertson because they also worked together on 118-30 Nightingale Lane. Although they put semi-detached houses on Granard Road and at the Bolingbroke Grove end of Nightingale Lane, all the others are terraced, albeit with recesses between the houses to give the appearance of being semi-detached. The terrace houses are a direct consequence of Appleby having to abandon the restricted covenant to sell the land.

By 1885, they must have found the development too much for them to finance by themselves, and they sold off parts of the estate to builders that they were already working with. The land for Nos 1-13 Thurleigh Road and 9-18 Bolingbroke Grove went to David Kettle, the other side of Thurleigh Road (Nos 2-30) to John Miller who built terraced houses, and land for two houses in Blenkarne Road to John Robertson, although he continued to build other houses there for [Ingr]am and Bragg with…

Source: Timothy Walker, 'Twixt the Commons, p.214. Used with the author's permission.

Page 219 — The Dents and Old Park Estates

The rents amounted to £1,282/13/3 per annum, an equivalent interest rate of 3.42% or in the parlance of the time, 29.2 years purchase.

Detailed examination of this development highlights a number of themes about the local townscape. To the casual observer, Victorian suburbs appear to have been constructed en masse of virtually indistinguishable houses. Yet as we have seen for South Battersea as a whole, there are almost infinite variations which reflect the original (or at least eighteenth century) pattern of land ownership. Disposals could depend on when the oldest inhabitant of the house died, any covenants restricting development, or whether it made sense to build in large or not so large gardens. The final factor was the effect of the bombs in World War Two.

In a rational world, there would have been a road along the bottom of the valley, following the path of the Falcon Brook, already converted in the late 1860s to a main sewer. This did indeed happen where the land on both sides of the brook was owned by the same person, which is why Northcote Road runs only as far as Broomwood Road; by contrast, on the south side of Broomwood Road, that is from the Dents Estate on, the brook was the boundary between two land owners, at least after Sir Charles Forbes had bought the land east of the brook and the rest of the Dents land had been divided. When houses were built on the land west of the brook, it made more sense to have their gardens going down to the lowest point than to have the road at the bottom since there was no incentive to lay out a road only half of which would benefit the developer.

The pattern of land ownership explains the rather odd feature of Nightingale Park Crescent, the circle of houses off Blenkarne Road. The developer was faced with the problem of how to make the most use of the land in the north east corner, to which there was no obvious access, once the two large houses had been built in Blenkarne Road. The circle, apart from being almost the only planning features in 'Twixt the Commons' allows an additional three or four houses.^vi Map 15 shows the route of Roy Road as originally intended, and…

vi The little patch of grass in the middle of the semicircle allowed the Crescent to be classified as a Square for the purposes of the Royal Commission on London Squares that reported in 1928.

Source: Timothy Walker, 'Twixt the Commons, p.219. Used with the author's permission.