Reclaiming Wandsworth’s Heritage

Video by John Crossland: youtu.be/fcNSP9ZNanc  ·  YouTube’s default transcription was edited and coded by Claude AI for historyofwandsworthcommon.org  ·  Slides (PDF)

IntroductionChair

I’d like to welcome one of our very longstanding members, and one who is on the executive committee: Bruce St Julian-Bown. He also looks after the open spaces in our area. He is a founder member of the Wandle Valley Forum, an umbrella group for the valley’s 150 voluntary groups, and was previously a vice chair of trustees of the proposed Wandle Valley Regional Park. He has accepted the poison chalice of stepping in at the last minute in place of our planned wine-tasting evening, which had to pull out — we’ll try to get them back later in the season. So Bruce, thank you very much.

The TalkBruce St Julian-Bown

“Reclaiming Wandsworth’s Heritage: a necessity, not a whim.” Of course we’d love to have our museum back — but there’s no money pretty much anywhere in government these days, and we shouldn’t hold our aspirations too high. But we will keep trying, and this is part of that story.

I’m aware that there are many here tonight far better qualified than I am to talk on local history. I’ve never formally studied history — I just researched this particular project, which was initially derived from a talk I gave to City St George’s University. Please forgive any hint of a lecturing tone. I was fascinated by what I discovered as I built up the presentation, and I kept discovering new things as I checked facts. It did jar any residual smugness from my school-day history lessons about all those imperial pink blobs on the world map of the Empire.

But the young and newly arrived have a right to learn more about their hometown and its past — a role once taken by our own town centre museum, which sadly remains shut in spite of Boris’s enthusiasm. That’s the original museum — not the original original, but the recent one — and that’s Boris at the West Hill Museum talking very avidly just after we moved in there, being very enthusiastic. Sadly, even with Boris’s efforts — though I’m not sure he made any — our museum shut and its collections were stored in a basement, being archived by wonderful volunteers. Well underway, but still in a basement. I visited that basement, and it was fascinating — all of this wonderful material just sitting there. That, sadly, is what it came to.

There is a purpose to this talk. It supports the campaign led by society member Sheila Allen, with society backing, for the reinstatement of our museum in a town centre building as soon as possible.

Why it is a necessity, not a whim

Wandsworth is one of London’s wealthiest and youngest boroughs, with an increasingly young and diverse community. A museum is a key aid to understanding the local community and its heritage, whilst providing a sense of place that boosts communal cohesion — quite an important issue these days. Wandsworth has a particularly strong list of historic assets, partly because of its strategic location on both the Thames and the Wandle.

Every invading force that arrived was likely to have had a look at Wandsworth, at the mouth of the Wandle — a river that acted, as we shall see, as a string on which our heritage pearls are hung.

Waves of arrivals: who we are and where we came from

Britain experienced a remarkable number of waves of arrivals, invaders and settlers over the last three millennia. Each one contributed to the national character we have today. Several of you will know much more about these waves of incomers than I do — but stringing them all together, I found it absolutely astonishing. I knew about some of them.

We’ll ignore those who walked across the land bridge that connected us to Europe up to around 6,000 BC — by that time it was more bog than chalkdowns. But it turned us from a peninsula into an island and changed our history forever. One reason why Genghis Khan, Napoleon, and Hitler never quite made it.

Neolithic people, around 3,100 BC, built Stonehenge — it took about 700 years to build and remains a major world heritage site. They were followed by the Bell Beaker culture, with links to the Iberian peninsula and several other parts of Europe. The name stems from the shape of their pottery.

Our recorded history starts with the Celts — the Keltoy or Bretoners as the Romans called them, a general term for the Celtic Iron Age tribes from all over Europe, including the Iceni, the Catuvellauni, and the Atrebates among many others. Their kingdoms were roughly county-sized as they settled and fought each other in southern England.

Then came the Romans, 43 to 410 AD. Julius Caesar’s famous remark veni, vidi, vici relates to an earlier recce in 55 BC; the full invasion was a century later. They founded Londinium, though sadly little of their architectural legacy remains above ground. The finds by Wandsworth Historical Society confirm they did settle locally, between Stane Street — conveniently down the road from here — and the Thames, close to its navigable limit around Twickenham.

The Anglo-Saxons arrived in the fifth century — some had already been mercenaries in the Roman legions. The Saxons, Angles and Jutes arrived from Germany and Jutland, and the elite Latin language and old Celtic were replaced by Old English, which only survived in our Celtic Gaelic fringes. In addition to their famous oblong battle shield, there was a circular Wandsworth Shield — not found far away, and discovered only about ten years earlier. It is among the crown jewels of Celtic creative achievement: absolutely superbly aesthetic by any standards today.

Then in the ninth century came the Vikings — Norwegians and Danes, sporadically raiding before sending a massive fleet in 865 AD, possibly even venturing a few yards up the Wandle. There was the customary butchery, followed by bartering, building, and settling. Their presence was confirmed by the Wandle Industrial Museum; they were frequent raiders up the Thames’s tributaries.

The next wave to make a mark was the Normans, in the 10th and 11th centuries. They built the White Tower and introduced castles and Norman churches. Their language mingled into the Saxon Norman culture and gave us a good part of our current vocabulary, eventually becoming Middle English. Interestingly, it was the Normans who first abolished — or rather discarded — slavery, replacing it with a feudal serf economy. The Normans were not surprisingly Norsemen — Vikings who had earlier mixed with the French: Vikings who loved quiche.

The Dutch and Flemish Huguenots followed in the 12th to 15th centuries, oppressed by the ruling Spanish in the Low Countries. Their skilled craftsmen and guild traditions, along with specialist flood-prevention engineers, were welcomed here. The Huguenot cemetery is right here on East Hill, as you all know.

Many of the Jewish diaspora arrived back in England during the 17th century, having been expelled by Edward I in about 1290. Cromwell let them return 400 years later, and they kept on coming, usually as refugees from persecution in many countries. Their financial skills and enterprise were welcomed, especially for royal project funding.

Then came the Empire, 16th to 19th century. The British Empire was established, and there were influxes from various colonies — the Indian subcontinent, Africa, the West Indies. We colonised people of every complexion, but empire had a special relevance to the Wandle Valley and Wandsworth.

The Irish came in the 18th and 19th centuries, and are still coming — my wife’s family came over, a little later. The Irish had for many decades come to find work in England. Between 1845 and 1855, about a million Irish arrived to escape the famine and poverty, although a sizeable percentage then went on to America. Making it, in the long term, the largest influx England had ever seen.

Just a note on slavery. Brits didn’t invent slavery, but many grew rich from exploiting people from colonised nations. It was largely William Wilberforce who led the way to abolition, which ended across the Empire in 1833, though it lingered elsewhere. Some of the wealth of the aristocracy of the period — and some of the wealth of their ancestors today — stems from the profits of slavery.

What each wave contributed

What did all these people contribute? The Celts gave us metalworking and craftsmanship — as you’ll see in those shields — design, decoration, the original Arthurian legends, Christmas holly, mirrors, and brewing ale from grain. The Romans offered town planning, money, fruit (apples, pears, cherries), spices, mint, great metal roads. The Anglo-Saxons gave us literature (Beowulf), the origins of the English language, the shire system, and local government. According to the BBC, the Vikings gave us trial by jury, developed towns into trading hubs, unified the Anglo-Saxon patchwork of kingdoms — and were, apparently, hygiene fanatics, including meticulous attention to their teeth. The Normans gave us architecture, cathedrals, formal government, Domesday Book, frameworks for society. The Dutch gave us horticulture — tulips, heated greenhouses, the pendulum clock, hop-based brewing, and they reintroduced brickmaking. The Huguenots brought silk-weaving, watchmaking, and banking practice which helped fund and kickstart the industrial revolution.

Of course there was friction, insecurity, fear — which can still be seen today. Often the last wave in complained first about the next wave. But in the historic context, our culture was enriched by each influx, making Britain the diverse, innovative, and outstanding nation it is today. Famed for its culture, its arts, its crafts, its science, and its liberal outlook. Not forgetting the cuisine — chicken tikka masala.

Wandsworth was also enriched by all of these things. Traces of DNA from all these arrivals can be found here today: about 50% from Celts, Anglo-Saxons, and Vikings, but strangely much less from the Romans and Normans. And it feels good to be a Wandsworthian with all that background. Surely the culture and contribution of ten waves of arrivals warrants presenting to the community in some form — the museum.

The place: what made Wandsworth special

Now let’s look at the place itself. What made Wandsworth deserving of a proper, established museum showcasing its broad heritage?

The impetus the Empire gave to the industrial revolution. Although they didn’t overlap — the Empire started first, and about 150 years later the industrial revolution followed — and Wandsworth is the only town centre the Wandle flows through. John Young once told me it was why his office was right next to the Wandle.

The Wandle provided the power that attracted industry, whose mills were built along it in the town centre. It was also close to Stane Street, which connects to Chichester — pretty important in Roman days — and later the Portsmouth Road, the A3, which led to Portsmouth and eventually Plymouth, giving strategic access to the port gateways to the Empire. So we had the Thames, the road to Chichester (important for Romans), and the road to our Empire.

The Wandle flows faster than the Thames as it drops 58 metres from its source in the Surrey Hills, not 12 miles away. That’s why the Wandle Valley soon became home for 20% of London’s manufacturing base. Much of it still there today, but plugged into the grid — now half-green itself.

Industry’s growth was sustained by imports of raw materials from the Empire, whose own markets then imported back some of the finished goods made in the Wandle Valley. Interestingly, the managing agents — the East India Company — became more important to Britain than Elon Musk’s industries are to the USA today. They had just 35 managers, headquartered in London, at the time they subjugated India — absolutely amazing. But their workforce eventually reached about a quarter of a million people, and they generated a quarter of world trade.

The 90-odd mills brought the Wandle the reputation as the hardest-worked river in Europe. The entrepreneurs then built their mansions along the riverbanks, and their gardens became a string of parks which are still around along the Wandle today. To add to Wandsworth’s share of the industrial revolution: in 1803 it became the world’s first public railway, connecting Wandsworth’s Thames wharf, across Stane Street south to Mitcham, Croydon, and Sutton.

We all know where Young’s brewery comes from — Young’s itself is our best-known local industry, still brewing, albeit on a token scale, on the same site after almost 200 years. And brewing started there 200 years before that.

The chalk stream: virtually unique on this planet

The Wandle’s trout fishing was renowned and provided quality food for centuries. Locals knew river waters were less safe than ale — but the Wandle was rather rare, as we shall see. Why was it so clean relative to the Thames and other rivers? The answer: it’s a chalk stream.

Planet Earth is home to about 3 million rivers of all types, but only a remarkable 250 — less than 0.01% — have been naturally filtered clean by passing through chalk aquifers.

Of those 250, which are mostly in south-east England (with a few in Yorkshire and the rest in Normandy), chalk streams tend to be slower flowing. So of those 250, very few indeed flow as fast as the Wandle — because its 58-metre drop between Carshalton and Wandsworth gives it a pace. The fast chalk streams come to something like 0.001% of all rivers. That’s virtually unique. A leaf can flow downstream at a brisk walking pace — fast enough to turn a big mill. Even today, the geological profile verges on making the Wandle unique to this planet.

So what did we do? We shoved it under the Arndale Centre. To be fair, in the 1970s the water was still pretty toxic — there was a price to pay for the surge in industry. Today, with the help of the Wandle Trust, the Wandle Valley Forum, and many volunteers, it has recovered significantly, but there are still too often damaging spills. The last spill that hit the headlines was from a bus garage in Thornton Heath.

The museum: where we are now

Even the rarity of the Wandle — and therefore of Wandsworth town centre, sitting on top of one of the rarest rivers in the world — is not enough on its own to get our museum back. But could a museum do more, be more relevant, more engaging? The answer is yes — but innovation is needed, and creative thinking.

What if the museum were part of a culture cluster with art gallery, studios, shop, café, library, bookshop, council offices? That would rationalise operating and maintenance costs and adds critical mass to the argument. What if we also introduced environmental issues — a green room? Sometimes there’s budget for green education but no money whatsoever for museums. Our interim benefactor’s private income kept us going for another four or five years, which demonstrates that the situation hasn’t fundamentally changed.

We proposed to change the basic way museums operate — and found, to our dismay and delight, that Brent Council had already done it in Willesden. The library was next door, a café, the shop, everything was there. We advised the council — that’s Sheila, the council’s heritage champion, who got a group together and scuttled rapidly over to see how it worked. They were totally gobsmacked by what they saw. Two years later: not a word. Council still has no funds.

The MOOF: Museum of Our Future

So we took the museum concept a key step further. Enter the MOOF — the Museum of Our Future. What if we braided in the environmental narrative alongside traditional historic lifestyle vignettes? So you’d have a little display: a 17th-century cottage, woodfire, people cooking, breathing in the smoke — whatever interpretation is available. You add a strand that talks about the environmental implications. Run it through the whole lifestyle section of the museum. On top of that, all the green sections lead to a rating section showing whether you use a washing machine, a motorbike, an electric car — what the impact on the environment is.

But the key difference is an additional room: the future room, presenting lifestyle choices in terms of their impact on global warming and therefore on our future. A typical museum of local history becomes a museum of our future, because we’re looking ahead.

There’s been quite a lot of interest — not just from the council, although we know that whatever stripe it wears it won’t have money to do anything straight away. It requires a new concept of what museums are, and we believe we have to think innovatively to make it go forward and to engage with a broader public.

Two things further. Cooperating with the other heritage assets along the Wandle could give us a critical mass and synergy that we don’t have working alone. And the MOOF — or whatever you like to call it — has genuine marketing potential. Some research needs doing on the branding.

What we’ve concluded

We’ve learned about our predecessors and what they contributed. We’ve seen how our heritage story grew through empire and green power on an industrial scale. We noted how that poisoned the valley, the water, and the biodiversity. We’ve realised that with twelve waves of arrivals, we have so much heritage to discover — it should be accessible at a focal town centre venue. The MOOF could be a critical educational medium, boosting awareness of and response to climate change.

The next wave of challenges to concern us are climate change: extreme heat and sea-level rise. So wear cooler whites and keep a pair of swimming flippers to hand.

A last word. On a recent visit to Malta, we visited Valleta’s museum, and I was intrigued by a sign which said: “A future for our past.” My thinking now is: should we have a sign saying “Our future depends on understanding the present”? There we are.

Thank you. Please note any mistakes or inaccuracies are mine. AI was used only with named sources. Thanks also to Wandsworth Historical Society’s website and Bob Steel’s wonderful Wandle Companion — indispensable to anyone interested. And to Sheila’s Save Our Museum campaign. Thank you for your attention and patience.

Questions and Discussion

There is a Roman bath just off the Strand. [Ian]
If you go past the one place in the whole of Britain where you must drive on the right — the entrance to the Savoy Hotel — there is on a walkway a short distance past there, close to St Clement Danes and the Royal Courts of Justice, a Roman bath. I think it belongs to the National Trust. You press a little button, the room lights up, and there it is. It’s not underground exactly — it’s slightly below the level of the walkway, visible through a window. I was aware of the Temple of Mithras in the City, discovered in the 1960s, but thank you for the tip about the Strand.

Where do Macalpine’s fusileers fit into the Irish story? [Ian]
That’s a very good question which I’m not well placed to answer, I’m afraid — it’s slightly outside the framework of what I’ve covered tonight.

On the question of “Celtic” versus “Keltic”. [Ian]
As a Scot, I’ve always been baffled by this — we have a football club called Celtic, but the people of that part of Scotland are always referred to as the Kelts. Well, in the history I’ve read, there was a group of Celts called the Scots in the Irish and Celtic fringes, where those languages thrive today and are still encouraged in Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. That heritage is fading, but it’s nice that it’s still there — and looking at the history of the words is another very interesting area I haven’t been able to touch on today.

An update on the Save Our Museum campaign. [Sheila Allen]
We were awarded over a million pounds by the Mayor of London and by the heritage fund for projects to do with heritage. All my time there I was never really able to mention the museum — it has been expunged from all council documents. However, we got a group of all the amenity organisations in the borough to support this effort to save the museum.

Because of being a borough champion, I was able to get in touch with the university at St George’s — now amalgamated with City — and we’ve been working with students there. The latest cohort just completed their project, and it was their own request to do it on the museum. They’ve done a really nice job, and I’d like to ask for some space at a future society meeting for them to come and present what they’ve discovered. In addition, the professor has told me that two of the students who completed this project are moving on to do a master’s in museum studies. How wonderful is that?

We also need to think about how we get the council involved. A colleague from the group of amenity organisations is working with a journalist from the Putney newspaper and wants to meet to see how we can move things forward. So things are still happening. Don’t give up. And if you do get an opportunity to engage with your councillor — and there’s only a majority of one — please take the opportunity to say “What about the museum?”

On the experience of working with the students. [Bruce St Julian-Bown]
It was very unexpectedly gratifying. Initially I approached it thinking “what have I let myself in for?” — but afterwards, when a couple of the students came back to the Wandle to present their findings and let me respond (which they videoed), I was quite surprised. There was so much detail and knowledge, and they were so interested. They came of their own volition just to have a look — and were fascinated. I then managed to arrange for them to go to the collection down in the basement. There is interest out there. They’re not done yet.

On where the society’s planning work stands. [John]
Last year, TfL pulled the plug on dealing with traffic problems in central Wandsworth — that wasn’t broadcast by the council; they kept it very quiet, and we discovered it quite late. At the same time the council started a public consultation about the town centre. They got quite a wide response, and in the spring this year produced a paper based on the consultation results — but crucially they did not ask for opinions about traffic, so that is still to be decided.

As a society we produced a paper last January or February — quite a long one, with a map — explaining how we thought there could be considerable improvements to the town centre irrespective of the traffic problem. Ideas we’ve been promulgating for at least 50 years, now put into the context of today. For instance: we’ve been pushing for 50 years for walks from the town centre to the river — encouraging people to walk from King George’s Park, from Southside, from the town centre up to the riverside. There are two routes possible: one through Wandsworth Plain and up the existing causeway to the river, and another when new developments occur on the east side of the Wandle.

We’ve also asked the council to seriously consider what they’re going to do with the courthouse building. The courthouse was originally one of the main Wandsworth museum buildings, and did so for many years before becoming the library. It’s now empty. There were plans to make it a commercial success by getting a smart restaurant in — but behind it are outbuildings including a second courtroom. We’ve put in our report that the courthouse should be reutilised as a major community centre for the town, incorporating a museum and the ideas that Bruce has put forward tonight. I actually approached one of the councillors involved in the town centre in the new administration yesterday, and I’m hoping to go and meet him soon.

On international comparisons — Bamberg, Germany.
Several years ago, Mike and I visited Bamberg in Eastern Bavaria — a UNESCO World Heritage Centre. They had a lovely horticultural museum and several others, and this is a town with a population of 79,000. Wandsworth as a borough has a population of about 338,000, median age 33. Bamberg also, slightly through chance, has a symphony orchestra — and is the centre of smoked beer, with 17 breweries in one town.

My take-home message is that I think we’ve been conditioned to be unambitious, not to ask for anything, not to expect good things. We stopped in one local museum the other day on the way up to Northampton — a small town, but with a fabulous museum, models, everything. And in Europe you can learn something from almost every one of them. The museum should be part of the ambiance of the town centre — somewhere you go for a coffee or near the supermarket, with this great well of your heritage and culture right there, totally accessible and totally explained, and evolving as time goes by. It’s exciting stuff. I was utterly gobsmacked at the rich mixture of cultures that make us what we are. You had to have a boat to come here by that time — a lot of effort.

On the current migrant communities in Wandsworth. [Sheila Allen]
We are not just a place that had a lot of migrants — we still have a lot of migrants. I’ve been spending about 18 months dispersing funds to groups who’ve come here to get established and are trying to do their own thing. We’ve got African dancing, Indian tapestry, even Ukraine. All these people have come to Wandsworth, and there is no central place where they can feel that’s their sense of place. They’re working on their own projects, and we’ve been giving them funds from heritage funding or from the Mayor. But wouldn’t it make sense to have a museum where they could go, be in community, and meet? One of their struggles is: they can come up with a project, they can deliver the project — but where do they put it? How is it seen by the people of Wandsworth? It isn’t, because we haven’t got a museum.

On the Irish in Wandsworth specifically. [Bruce St Julian-Bown]
I checked to see whether the Irish came specifically to Wandsworth or just to London in general. They almost all came to Wandsworth specifically, because the Wandle did have better water than other places. You could go some way up it — you couldn’t go much further down the Thames, perhaps as far as Twickenham, which I believe was the first navigable barrier. They did actually come to Wandsworth because of the Wandle — and it was very well placed, as it is today.

On the problem of engaging young people.
What do we do about the problem of the young not joining anything? They tend to stick in their own little communities. The implication of what I’ve been saying specifically applies to the National Health Service — forget about right-wing politics, the NHS is crying out for precisely the sort of people we want to attract today.

On the word “museum” as a barrier. [Joe]
There is a problem using the word “museum” too much. Young people don’t engage with the idea very readily — it’s got too narrow a definition. They’re not interested in history per se. I had an experience of that comparatively recently in a club where there are a lot of old photographs: a young member said “it’s too much like a museum in here.” So there’s that derogatory thinking among youngsters. There needs to be an angle to bring them in which doesn’t sound too oldy-worldy.

My question: how did Willesden raise the money? It seems pretty scandalous that representatives from Wandsworth went to Willesden to find out about it and then nothing developed. It would be interesting to know how they gathered together the money to make their centre. In the middle of Wandsworth we’ve got a very noticeably smart old building in the civic centre — it would be a nice idea if something could be bolted onto that, a bit like the Pompidou Centre in Paris.

On Malta’s museum motto.
Going back to that slide — Malta’s sign: “a future for our past.” I’m thinking a future depends not only on understanding our present, but on understanding the past too, because you get a handle on what’s going to happen when you look back at how things did happen. “Our future depends on understanding not only our present but also our past.” Though that’s a bit clumsy.

On the museum as wedding venue.
Our daughter, who’s 37, got married two weeks ago — in the Museum of the Home in Bethnal Green. She’s a television producer, was looking for something niche, and found a special function room there where they did a Celtic handfasting ceremony. There was nowhere for the meal and speeches though — everybody had to walk around the corner to the Marksman pub. Perhaps we could add “weddings venue” to the list of things on offer in a museum complex. It’s one way of bringing the young in, because the young do still get married — occasionally.

Closing RemarksChair

Bruce, thank you — it’s interesting to hear how much comment there has been afterwards, which shows that your talk has struck a chord. Thank you very much indeed.