Friends of Wandsworth Common · Heritage Group Talk · 2021
150 Years of the Wandsworth Common Act
April 1870 · Part Two
Thank you, Richard and Julia. I'll get straight on, because I've got a huge amount to cover — even though I was supposed to have finished last time. Needless to say, I got through rather more than half. It's a very large half.
So I'm going to move quickly. Let's get straight into the slides — and with a bit of luck you'll see something. If you don't, then we're in trouble.
[Technical hiccup with slides]
So: "Down with the fences" — John Buckmaster, Earl Spencer, and Wandsworth Common.
Because this is Part Two, I've given it a separate title: The Battle for Plough Green, April 1870.
Most people don't know where Plough Green is — it took me quite a while to find out exactly where it was. It's gone, pretty much. But the events of the 13th and 14th of April 1870 could be argued to constitute the 24 most important hours in the history of Wandsworth Common. That may be an overstatement, but there's a grain of truth in it.
I'm not going to rehearse what I covered last time, but I was out for a walk the other day, looking once again at the location of John Buckmaster's house. This is the top of the Common — the purply-pink bit, right next to Clapham Junction Station.
He lived at that time in New Row, very close to what became the booking office. The houses are all gone now, and what stands there today is really rather grim. I pointed the camera away from a group of people who were drinking rather heavily — they're just visible in the left-hand corner.
As I came back out of what is now an alley called Preston Road — it was called New Road in his time — I was suddenly struck by something. He lived on St John's Hill at the Clapham Junction fork, with Harbut Road about a hundred yards away. And I was struck by the building on the left, now called The Junction, which used to be the Windsor Castle.
I love the rainbow alongside it, and the lovely rustic look. I don't think John Buckmaster would have been very pleased — he hated alcohol, with what effect we know. But there's a little reminder that once upon a time this area was rather different.
And as I was walking back — retracing his steps, as it were — I came across this intriguing poster on the railway bridge. It's from Extinction Rebellion: "Wake Up, Wandsworth — Time and Emergency." And I thought: he would have loved this. He would absolutely have loved it. "Reduce air pollution to within legal limits, stop the destruction of mature trees and green spaces, introduce food waste collections, and completely divest the pension fund from fossil fuels."
It's just one small way in which the past and the present connect. We might return to that as we go along.
I want to share a speech that John Buckmaster gave in March 1871, in which he reminisces about the time he first experienced Wandsworth Common. I think it's exceptionally beautiful, and it tells you a great deal about the man and about the changes that had overtaken the Common.
I've selected a few images of the Common and its edges as he would have known them, and I'm going to read short extracts from this remarkable speech — given, as it happens, at the Spread Eagle pub.
This painting was made in around 1850, more or less the time of his walk. You can see in the distance, dead centre, some spires — Westminster Abbey and various other landmarks. The river below. Nothing like this view is possible today.
He says:
It is now nearly 30 years since I first saw Wandsworth Common. The late Dr. Lindley used to assemble his students at 7 o'clock at the Falcon, and after a very plain breakfast, which cost ninepence each, we used to proceed to the Common in search of plants.
Dr. Lindley — you may know the Lindley Library at the Royal Horticultural Society. He was a wonderful botanist, and also, relevantly, fought tooth and nail to save Kew Gardens from being built on. But that's another story.
It was a lovely spring morning. The curlews and sheep were feeding among the yellow gorse. The linnets were singing, and nightingales could be heard in the evening. Under the shade of the furze bushes, the violet and heath blossomed. The air was soft and balmy, and here and there the majestic elm and chestnut reared their lofty heads.
An avenue of trees, nearly three quarters of a mile long, lined the main road, and from the eastern sky, pure from the throne of God, the sun streamed in all its gold and splendour as the lark ascended at the sound of our footsteps.
That avenue of trees is Bolingbroke Grove — it wasn't called that then; it was called Five Houses. But that is what it is.
Notice there is a strong vein of nature mysticism running through Buckmaster and his contemporaries. Several of the people who fought hardest to save the Common were deeply religious — Edwin Rant, for instance, was an ardent Quaker.
This is the Common he was walking on. As you'll recall from last time, I made a map showing what the Common looked like before it was divided by roads and railways. It was much larger — nearly 400 acres — stretching right down to almost Tooting Bec. By the time of the 1871 Act it had been reduced massively.
Here is another image of the Common — much more like the bare common you might imagine: water on the right-hand side, ponds and puddles, a few cows, some sheep, and perhaps a donkey. These are reproduced from slightly earlier, the end of the 18th century, from Hieronymus Grimm — rather fuzzy images, but they give you a sense that the Common and its surroundings were very, very different.
Buckmaster continues in his speech:
They stayed pretty different until the coming of the railway, and was undisturbed by lords of manors or speculating builders or beer-shop keepers or railway companies. We could wander from the Plough to Tooting Corner.
I felt thankful that within a radius of four miles from Charing Cross, from some course or other, such a place had been left for public enjoyment. Men may tire and grow weary over picture galleries and works of art, but nature never wearies.
And then, further on:
I never dreamed I should live to see the Common as it is now. Heaps of unsightly ashes and filth, beer shops, houses neither wind-tight nor water-tight, trees cut down and injured. Railway companies, gravel diggers, schools, and private individuals have scrambled for the Common, and we've been told by Lord Spencer that the Common belongs absolutely to him.
Those last words are actually from Spencer's agent, Hughes: "All this has been done by the absolute will and order of his Lordship."
Now, on this we join an issue. We think that others have rights besides Lord Spencer. I have no wish to question or interfere with the rights of anyone
— and the crowd shouts, "Hear, hear!" —
but when I and others have exercised from time immemorial the privilege of walking across the Common, it does seem rather strange that we should now be told that we are trespassers, and that the Common is Lord Spencer's private property, as sacred as Althorp Park.
Cheers. And there is abundant evidence in the contemporary reports of those cheers. He concludes:
If, however, there are other rights, we think the rights of the poorest man are as sacred as the rights of Lord Spencer, and that these rights are not to be yielded without a struggle.
We commenced this battle not in any spiteful or angry spirit. We feel indignant at what has been done, and the way in which it has been done, and we are determined that those who come after us shall not reproach our memory with any want of spirit in endeavouring to hand down to others, uninjured and unimpaired, the same rights and privileges which we inherited from men who were prepared to sacrifice everything in defence of what they believed to be right and just.
As you may recall from the last talk, I produced this map. The massive demonstration of August 1867 — four, five, perhaps six thousand people, according to some sources — met in the pink triangle. That's where St Mark's Church is now, at the point on the right-hand side. It hadn't been built then, of course. The reason the meeting was held there was that a fence had been put around pretty much all the land to the south.
On one side you have the cemetery — not part of the Common at this time — and on the other, Chivalry Road and the houses, which we'll come to in a moment.
The Plough pub is going to feature many times in what follows. There it is on the map. The Freemasons Hotel — you may know it now as the Roundhouse — and that pink kite shape is the site of the battles I'll be describing: old Plough Green.
You might ask yourself: why is such an enormous pub in such a strange location? Another pub was being built at the same time as the Roundhouse — the Lord of the Manor, on that corner. It's not there any more.
Buckmaster again:
A beer shop has recently been erected on the Common in remembrance of his Lordship's many virtues.
The pub is called the Lord of the Manor. "His Lordship's many virtues." He has a dry wit.
And the servile obsequiousness of some men in the presence even of the agent produces in me a feeling akin to seasickness... Was this the spirit of our forefathers? Even in my time, these enclosures would not have been permitted without a struggle. The decline of that old Saxon spirit, which obtained many of our rights and privileges and preserved them for our enjoyment, is a sad characteristic of our time.
Here is a newspaper report from the South London Press, a couple of days after one of his more direct interventions:
The action raised against Mr. J.C. Buckmaster, M.A., of St John's Hill, New Wandsworth, for breaking the windows of a beerhouse erected at the corner of Wandsworth Common, to assert the public right to the use of the Common and to protest against the Lord of the Manor, Earl Spencer, leasing the ground to builders, is still pending. A fund is being raised to defray the costs of the action, as Mr. Buckmaster acted exclusively in the public interest. Sir Charles Dilke, Baronet MP, has subscribed £5 towards the fund.
Many others subscribed too.
Buckmaster himself said he hadn't actually meant to smash the window. He was trying to put a poster on it — and somehow the window just got broken.
Why were there so many pubs here? Because there were railway stations. Clapham Junction wasn't created right at the beginning; the first two stations were called, for a while, Clapham Common Station and Wandsworth Station. The line on the left went down towards Southampton; the one on the right ultimately went towards Brighton, but initially towards Crystal Palace. The stations brought the pubs: the Roundhouse and Freemasons on the left, the Lord of the Manor on the right, and several others besides.
This area does not survive intact, even in spite of Buckmaster's efforts and those of thousands of others. The new Wandsworth Road Station swallowed an immense amount of land. There was a special railway spur, and you can actually still trace its course today; it's most peculiar. I've marked it in pink. It comes up out of the lower level where all the main lines run, rising sharply — because it continued to function as a refuse dump and a coal depot.
Then Chivalry Road was put in, and a number of houses built. And on the other side of the road, this is how it all looked in 1910.
Neil, of Neil's Nursery, was a major coal supplier. He had his depot there, along with three or four others, and here are some of his cart horses and trays supplying coal from exactly that point.
If people in Arundel Close or Shaftesbury Road knew what had gone on here they would probably shiver — because it really was pretty disgusting. Fires for burning rubbish burned there sometimes for a year or more. Great mounds of refuse. I have a feeling that many of the lumps and bumps along the Common by the railway line are partly just refuse with a thin layer of soil over them — not, as many people believe, spoil from the railway cutting; that was taken further along the line to build embankments. I'd love a Time Team study of them.
And that pink line is still visible today. If you're on a train heading up towards Clapham Junction, look to the right — you can see the course of the old spur. And that's Shaftesbury Road at the top.
In the last talk I looked in some detail at the great-and-good poster, showing Edwin Rant in the middle, Tom Taylor the famous dramatist, poet and humorist, and many others, with Buckmaster listed as secretary. But this is the popular poster:
"Wandsworth Common — even now that devastation has begun and half the business of destruction done..."
That's a quotation from Oliver Goldsmith's The Deserted Village, from the 1770s — a marvellous poem that Buckmaster quotes many times in his speeches. If anyone ever wants to discuss it, it really is well worth it.
Addressed to the inhabitants and working men of Wandsworth, the poster runs through the now-familiar litany of those ruining the Common: bankrupt and speculating builders, land societies, tailors, gentlemen, noble lords, all making a profit from it. Towards the bottom it names "the enclosure by Mr. Kosteker and Mr. Smith" — lessees of houses on the edge of Plough Green. Kosteker lived next door to the Plough, Smith three or four doors along.
What's the remedy? Buckmaster invokes recent legal precedent. The court case at Berkhamsted had just been decided a few weeks before: the people who broke down the fences put up by Augustus Smith were held to be entirely within their rights, because Smith had no right to enclose the Common.
So Buckmaster agitates: "Men of Wandsworth, go and do thou likewise." Down with the fences.
Here we come to the riot on Plough Green itself.
This is the Plough today — not as Buckmaster knew it, needless to say. Looking in the opposite direction, you can see the old Granada cinema. The road going straight to the right is St John's Hill; Buckmaster lived about a hundred yards down there. To the left is Plough Road.
This is roughly what the pub looked like in his time. It had been built by 1701, and it's quite significant in the history of Wandsworth Common. You can see on the left a tall, lumpish shape — an old oak tree. On that tree there was a ring where people tethered their horses.
Here is the pub as it was after being rebuilt in the 1870s and 1880s — massive and grand. Then it was damaged by a bomb, a new building went up, this is what it looked like when I was a teenager, and this is what it looks like today.
Topographically, the site matters. St John's Hill rises steeply from Clapham Junction — a natural place for travellers to stop. The same is true of Plough Road, quite steep as it descends towards the Thames. The hill forms a plateau.
It was also very close to what I call the ghost road — marked with dots on the map, most of it now vanished entirely. It dates from a 1740s map, running down towards Tooting Bec, across the Common. By Buckmaster's time it was no longer in use; the railway had cut straight across it and new roads had been built. The only relic I think survives is that little gravel path behind the toast rack on the Common.
And there was that ring on the tree. The Plough is famous for being one of the places where Dick Turpin is said to have stayed. I just Googled "Dick Turpin, the Plough" and every Plough in the country appears to claim the same distinction: one in Harrow, one in Sutton Coldfield, one in Worcester Park.
But highwaymen were real enough on Wandsworth Common. Here is a report from 1799:
Last Sunday night, as Mr. Eld of Long Elms was returning to town over Wandsworth Common, he was stopped by two highwaymen, and on refusing to deliver his money, one of them discharged a pistol at him, but it missed. Mr. Eld then discharged a pistol at the robbers, on which they rode off.
Other accounts of footpads and highwaymen on the Common remind you just how wild a place it was.
You may be asking: what has this to do with enclosure? It connects in this way.
This is Millbank Prison — the largest and most notorious prison in the early 19th century, now the site of the Tate galleries. It was a massive building, originally intended for Battersea Rise. The planners first tried Wandsworth Field — where the toilets are now — but that didn't work out. So they settled on Battersea Rise:
1794 — to be put to hard labour, persons convicted of transportable crimes; to purchase land to build a penitentiary on Battersea Rise for ladies and gentlemen.
A strange phrase, but there were to be separate prisons for men and women. The territory it would have occupied stretched the entire length of the hilly part of St John's Hill, almost down to the river. It would have held 5,068 prisoners — the largest prison in the world at the time.
Imagine: we might have had a Tate gallery at the top of St John's Hill, if only we'd endured fifty or sixty years of a truly dreadful prison.
By curious coincidence, the man who laid the foundations at Millbank Prison — the first concrete foundations of any building since the Romans; the ground was so waterlogged that they had to reinvent wet-setting concrete — was also, as it happens, the architect of St Anne's Church in Wandsworth.
There was a meeting at the Plough of the principal inhabitants of Battersea and Wandsworth on 15th May 1794, strongly opposed to the scheme: "This very valuable plot of ground would be highly prejudicial to the property of the subscribers." This is exactly the moment when people were building fine houses around Clapham Common and along Lavender Hill.
I know I'm going into a great deal of detail, but I think this kind of detail gives colour and texture that a more methodical listing of events would lack. It gives you a feel for the time.
The Millbank Prison story matters because I believe it helps explain why five or six thousand people were on the Common protesting those enclosures — and why, shortly afterwards, people were breaking down fences and risking prison in doing so.
The enclosure Acts of the 1780s, 1790s and early 19th century coincide exactly with the creation of other oppressive institutions: workhouses, prisons, reformatories. And Wandsworth Common was literally ringed around by them.
Although the Millbank Panopticon was never built here, by the 1850s the Common had, nearby: a lunatic asylum on Burntwood Lane; St James's Industrial School — a respectable phrase for what was effectively a borstal, taking the naughty boys from St James's parish in Westminster, which was Earl Spencer's own parish; and the workhouse just a couple of hundred yards further along, now a clinic of some kind at St John's.
People were genuinely sensitive to all this. They felt at real risk of being locked up. The resistance to enclosure was, I think, partly fuelled by the sense that liberties were being taken in every sense of the word.
So this is the area we're concerned with: the ground between the Plough and the Freemasons Hotel. I'm going to skim through some maps to show how it was gradually closed in.
The circle marks the Plough. Notice it was then called Dunghill Square — but it's all greenery, with paths. This is 1787. No railway, of course.
Now getting more detailed — 1839, very close to the time Buckmaster was walking the Common with Dr. Lindley. the Common is still there, but the railway has been cut straight through. And as soon as that happens, people start encroaching. They take liberties at pinch points.
On the top right, Kosteker wants to enclose land around Number 248 and stop the route through. On the southern side, a series of plots perhaps owned by somebody called Smith at Number 43. And by 1870 — I can't linger, but you can see that a small strip of common still survives right in the middle. The Ordnance Survey, however, has drawn firm lines: this ground has been permanently fenced. It has been lost to the people.
Buckmaster again:
One evening, a footpath which ran diagonally across a piece of the Common was stopped at both ends, and the land added to the gardens of adjoining owners. This enclosure deprived the public of a convenient footpath, and stopping it created much ill feeling and indignation.
The enclosure was protected at both ends with a high closed fence of a most formidable character, lined inside and out with sheet iron. The one boundary was the railway and the other the gardens of the Conservators. Men would assemble in small detachments in the evening and look at the fence. The police were on the lookout. They expected a siege some evening, and they were not disappointed.
Here is an account from the Metropolitan and Surrey Gazette, 13th April 1870:
Some 150 men at midday attacked some gates and fencing which had been put up at the rear of the Plough Inn, where there had been a footpath in constant use across that portion of the Common known as Plough Green.
On asking a female bystander what the stir was about, she replied: "Sure, it's the fencing they're going to pull down, and mean to do it."
After breaking through the fences at the entrance to the footpath, the crowd greatly increased, and cheered by the enlivening strains of Ethiopian minstrels who led the procession across the path, until they reached another fence near the Freemasons Inn. This fence was quickly demolished, and the right of way was asserted in a rough and ready manner, causing angry words and much excitement in that otherwise quiet neighbourhood. The stir and tumult continued until dusk, hundreds of people hastening to see what had been done about the path.
A fascinating reference to Ethiopian minstrels. This was clearly a planned event — people had been gathering to stare at the fence for days, but they had also invited musicians to come along. It's a riot, but it's a festival. People were determined to have serious fun.
Someone was arrested: a young man, a sawyer who had come from Essex and was working in the gardens locally. He was charged with, along with other persons not in custody, wilfully damaging a wooden fence enclosing a kitchen garden belonging to Mr. John Kosteker, lessee, of John's Mill, Wandsworth.
He was taken to court by Kosteker's brother, a solicitor. The complainant was the lessee of a piece of ground running by the side of the railway, facing Wandsworth Road. He had enclosed it in 1868 and since then put it into cultivation. Persons had previously wandered over it for many years and "erroneously supposed that they had a right of way across it."
The fact that it had been put into cultivation is significant. The principal argument used in the 19th century to justify enclosure was that the land was needed for food production — and that the people no longer needed it for their cattle, sheep, geese, ducks, or rabbits. Let alone for air and exercise.
There was also a backstory involving a Mr. Clark, a butcher on St John's Hill — middle-class people were deeply angry too. He had previously damaged the fence by hacking at the gates at night, for which he had been fined 14 shillings. In the present episode, he had been handing tools to the men — sledgehammers, saws, and so forth.
A police constable gave evidence:
On Wednesday afternoon he was on duty at New Wandsworth, where he saw the prisoner, who called upon the mob to assist him to break down the gates. He threw a heavy stone at the gates, and after he got them down, he jumped upon them and broke the panels. He picked up a large stair-rail and walked across the ground. He said, "This is our place, boys, and we'll stick to it."
We learn that Earl Spencer is lord of the manor, and that the land was formerly part of Wandsworth Common — but that the previous Spencer had sold off his rights over it in 1836. Such were the debts he had been left with by his father and grandfather that he had sold off immense areas of Battersea; he was actually quite a small landowner by then.
The magistrate, Mr. Damon, said it was very desirable, no doubt, that open spaces in crowded localities should not be enclosed — but he doubted whether the public could claim to keep Wandsworth Common open without an Act of Parliament.
People recognised that direct action alone would not be enough. And then the debate arose: should you engage in this kind of activity at all? It reminded me of the arguments around Extinction Rebellion — you shouldn't be breaking the law. And what these people said was: we are acting within the law, because the law protects our rights of way and our common land. That, too, was a moot point.
Poor Samuel Sellings was fined 40 shillings, and in default, ordered to be imprisoned. The reports say six months, though it may actually have been about ten days. He could not afford the fine. He went to prison.
Buckmaster was not present at the time of the arrest, and deeply regretted it. If only the young man had been advised to plead that he was acting within the law, he thought, Damon might well have let him off. Damon had let Buckmaster himself off several times before; at one point Buckmaster had seven writs against him, most of which had never stuck, because he consistently argued that he was acting for a greater public good.
Buckmaster was in no doubt who the real criminal was: not Samuel Sellings, but the Common-stealer Kosteker.
He goes to Sellings's employer, who agrees to take the man back when he comes out of prison. He prepares a memorial to the Home Secretary. He pleads with the vicar — to no effect, because the vicar's interests lie primarily with the wealthier members of his parish at St Mary's.
This was the representative of the Church of the Poor Man, which ought to have protected him against the greed and avarice of the rich. I should never have gone to him but for his frequent private expressions of approval and encouragement.
The vicar did nothing. Very annoying.
A petition for release is drawn up. Buckmaster collects a thousand signatures — which may not sound a great many, but Battersea was far less populated then; perhaps only a tenth or a twentieth of today's numbers.
He goes to Charles Dilke in the House of Commons, and is sent on a weary round of referrals: "Referred to Brown, look up precedents, refer to the Assistant Secretary for instructions, refer to the committing magistrate." The young man would very nearly have served his full time.
But Buckmaster does get him released. And the scene outside the prison gates is extraordinarily touching:
When his companions heard of his release, they procured a van and decorated it with ribbons, laurels, evergreens, and flowers. An armchair was placed in the centre, a band of music arrived at the prison gates, and the prisoner was received with hearty expressions of sympathy and goodwill.
The band, with van and procession, moved slowly to the scene of the late battle for which the young man had suffered ten days' imprisonment, and then they went along the road, stopping in front of the houses of the Common-stealers and playing, almost to the bursting of their instruments, "See, the Conquering Hero Comes"
— that's from Handel —
with occasional yells of "Who stole the Common?" The procession moved through the parish to the schoolroom, where I presented the prisoner with a new suit of clothes and £5 provided by the committee.
That committee was the Wandsworth Common Preservation Society.
This is St Mark's — which wasn't there yet, as I said — but this is more or less the site. The schoolroom Buckmaster refers to is this little building here, the first you come across coming up Battersea Rise. It is in a sadly dilapidated condition for such an important building — another piece of sacred ground.
It was an infant school, originally called St Mary's School. In 1866 it was the very first piece of ground to be taken from the Common, on that little corner. Nobody protested.
I don't know if you can see, but the K in the lettering was originally a Y. It is said — and I'm sure it's true — that when the new parish was created, the most economical solution was simply to name the new church St Mark's, and avoid having to alter that nicely carved lintel. You can still see it today, though the poor building is really rather dilapidated.
Buckmaster persuades everybody to go home quietly, but people have been drinking and they grow noisy and troublesome.
I did all I could, and as the young man was safe, I left. And the next morning, two or three others were each fined five shillings.
The newspaper reports people shouting three cheers for Mr. Buckmaster, groans for those who had enclosed the Common, and a vote of thanks to the vicar for allowing use of the schoolroom.
The story doesn't altogether end happily. This is pretty much the route of the old railway at Strathearn Road — not my favourite part of the Common's surroundings; a very densely packed built-up area, practically no gardens.
I took some photographs on that walk I opened with. You can get a feel, can't you? As soon as those fences went up — ostensibly to provide orchards and vegetable gardens — the land was sold off and rebuilt at extraordinary density.
And here again is that lovely little schoolroom where the party was held. Significantly, if you look at the road on the other side — which used to be called Middleton Road — you'll find it's now called Buckmaster Road. It was renamed in the 1930s.
The big question is: which Buckmaster? I would like to think it was John Charles Buckmaster, but it might have been his son, Stanley Owen Buckmaster, born in Battersea in 1861, the first Viscount Buckmaster — a man with a truly distinguished political and legal career.
And our first battle began and ended in a police court. But there was a still more formidable battle preparing.
They found a witness — Buckmaster calls him Rigsby, probably to conceal his identity. And things went disastrously wrong.
In less than 20 minutes, Rigsby told the whole story of his signing the affidavit — what I had told him to say, that I would stick to him to the last, that he should not be sixpence the poorer for the lawsuit; perhaps that the Common was no good to him, never had been. It was to oblige me that he signed the paper. He didn't know exactly what it was about, but I told him it was all right.
If an earthquake had swallowed me and the others, I should not have objected. After all my work, this was a terrible blow. The lawyer leaned over to me and said, "It's all up." The counsel and lawyers for the defendants sniggered at each other, waiting for the magic words: "Judgment for the defendants with costs." The thieves who had stolen the Common laughed outright. And as I came out of the court, they jeered at me.
However, the Vice Chancellor — a pious, good old man; may he rest in peace — said, "I shall reserve judgement."
The counsel and lawyers stared at one another, packed up their cartload of papers, and left.
In a few days we heard rumours of an armistice.
I never knew for certain, but I believe the good Vice Chancellor had an interview with the Lord of the Manor, who consented to a friendly Act of Parliament by which all that was left of the Common — about 15 acres — should remain open and unenclosed forever, on payment of £200 a year, or 20 years' purchase, secured on the rates of the parishes adjoining the Common, which was about a farthing in the pound. The parishes cheerfully assented, and after five years, the fighting ended.
And as you know from the beginning of the last session, the Act was passed. It began its passage on 13th February 1871, and by 31st July — after the usual to-ing and fro-ing between the Houses — the Wandsworth Common Bill became law.
A few Sundays after, I was standing under the portico of St Mary's Church, looking out on the Thames, when a cab drove up with the Lord of the Manor. He asked, "Is the vicar here?" I replied, "No, my lord, he's preaching this morning at the little iron church on the Common." He inquired the way and how far it was. "I shall be pleased to accompany your Lordship," says Buckmaster, who was the churchwarden.
Now, I didn't know what the iron church looked like until recently. I've since found out — it was the original St Mark's Church on the corner of the Common, built right next to that little infant school. It had originally stood on Lymington Court Road in Streatham and was transported here.
We talked about his appointment of the new vicar — this is Erskine Clarke — which had so far given great satisfaction. I took the opportunity of saying, "During the unpleasantness about the Common, I was not actuated by any ill feeling towards your Lordship, and if I said anything which in calmer moments I should not have said, I hope your Lordship will accept my humble apology. I believe your agent often misrepresented me to your Lordship."
He replied — Spencer — "I quite understand your action in the matter. It is now all over. I am satisfied, and I hope the parishes concerned are satisfied. The best thing for us all is to forget the past."
His Lordship looked round on the cinder heaps and coal heaps and inquired, "Is this the Common there has been so much trouble about?"
"A part of it, my lord."
We entered the little iron church, and I returned to the parish church in time to hold the plate.
And so ended an agitation which originated in weakness but ended in victory. And if, when the two gravel diggers came to complain about the potatoes in 1862, I could have foreseen what was before me, I should never have written a letter to the newspapers.
And that was — if I say so myself — a magical history tour. I'm Philip Boys, and I'm working on a website called HistoryWandsworthCommon.org.
And this is the wonderful book that will appear in a few days' time, put together by a fantastic team. This is the logo for the 150th anniversary. I am now finishing.
Host: Well done, Philip! A round of applause for Philip, and a round of applause for John Charles Buckmaster.
So that was a very fascinating romp through the last part of the story. It's gripping, I'm telling you. It still leaves us asking questions. Oh, absolutely brilliant — and you are such a storyteller. Philip, I think for your next career, when you've done all the research, just turn into a full-time storyteller. I think you could make a killing.
Host: We have a last slide to show. While Julia's doing that, let me just flash this up — which is indeed the only copy of the book currently in London. The rest of the copies are somewhere in the Channel, hopefully floating, on their way.
The book launch is on May the 16th. The book tells many of the stories Philip hasn't had time to elaborate on, and a great deal more: 192 pages, full colour. The book launch will feature presentations from the five chapter editors, with a Q&A. We'll let you know as soon as the book is available to buy — we hope that will be before the launch, but we can't guarantee it. And at £12.50 it is a bargain.
Host: I think there weren't any questions in the chat — we'll pass any on to Philip. We are now at one minute to seven.
There's a "well done" in the chat. The fact that you managed to keep time was amazing, Philip — I'm sure you galloped over half the things you wanted to tell us. His head is just crammed full of the history of this area. We need one of those Harry Potter Pensieve scenes — where we could empty your brain and get all this amazing knowledge out. It must have taken you hours and years.
And I'm sure Adrian Buckmaster is here on the call. Big shoes to fill, Adrian! You can unmute yourself if you want to say hello.
Rose: Thank you very much. I remember the goods yard and Shaftesbury Road, and I remember the sidings and the coal traps in '67. I was fascinated by it all. Thanks.
Host: Adrian — how does it feel, having an ancestor like that?
Adrian Buckmaster: Interesting thing is, it's only relatively recently that he's become a key member of the family story, because he was rather overshadowed by his son. Stanley was so well known that when I was growing up, everything we ever heard about was Stan. It was only more recently that I heard about J.C. And I think it was the Millward family that really did more to bring him to life — and of course Mary Tasker, in writing her thesis. Mary is also a generation or so on from me.
Host: Fascinating. We are very much looking forward to meeting Adrian and some of his family at events over the summer — when we can all meet face to face rather than virtually.
We have two plaques being unveiled to John and Rachel Buckmaster. One is being spearheaded by the Battersea Society and will be at Clapham Junction Station, nearest to where Buckmaster lived on Preston Road. The other will be on the wall of the Skylark Café, to commemorate Buckmaster and others who followed him in fighting to save the Common.
And we have to remember: the fight continues. That's one of the reasons we have the Friends, and all of you — because we all need to work together to keep this wonderful green space. Philip has shown us that everyone thought it was their right, and then suddenly it was taken away. We don't want that ever to happen again.
It just leaves me to thank Philip once again for sharing his extraordinary knowledge in such an entertaining way. We hope to see many of you at the virtual book launch on Sunday the 16th. For Friends members, information will be in the newsletter. If you're not a member, email us and we'll send you the link — and as it's virtual, everyone is welcome.
Each of the five chapter authors will give you a taste of their chapter. It is quite a big book — 192 pages, full of maps and pictures. We owe the original idea to Philip, who started gathering this remarkable information a long time ago. It's been a great team project, and it's taken a lot of hard work to reach this point. We're all very proud of what's been achieved, and we hope you'll enjoy it when you finally get your hands on it.
Once again, a huge thank you to Philip. We wish you all a very lovely evening, and hope to see some of you on the bark walk coming up, and on the Wildflower Walks and other events. We've started the face-to-face gatherings in small, manageable chunks.
And anyone who is a litter picker — see you tomorrow morning. Thank you, everyone, and have a lovely evening.