Wandsworth Common
A Living Memory

We've got an awful lot to get through this evening, though we probably won't cover it all. We've tried to structure things around a few broad topics: the Common's appearance, recreation and use, the buildings on the Common, transport, and then various institutions — the Royal Victoria Patriotic Building, the prison, schools, hospitals, shops, pubs, and places of worship. We're aiming to finish by seven, so roughly ten minutes per topic.

Within each category there are specific things we'd like to ask you about, and particular images or photographs we're hoping you might have. If we don't get round to everything tonight, we'd be very happy for you to send us further information and pictures afterwards — this is really just the start of the process for us.

We'll begin with a short patchwork of images I've put together. The first is an aerial photograph showing the Scope — the area to the south of the Common, a kind of trapezoid shape. When I was young in the 50s and early 60s, that was the cinder patch. We'll keep coming back to it.

This next photograph, believe it or not, was taken in the early 1980s. It shows molinia grass with silver birches erupting in the background. And here is the view from the back of the houses in Routh Road, again from the 1980s. Very open. Closing up. And then this is a recent picture — densely packed, as we all know it now.

This is Peter Bonetti, who played for Chelsea Football Club. One story has it that when Chelsea's pitch was very muddy they used to come and practise on the cinder patch. A lot of people say that's true; a lot say they saw it. One of the theories.

This image from 1983 is not the Winter of Discontent — though it might just as well be. It shows the period when Wandsworth Council dustmen were resisting privatisation. For a long time rubbish was piled up around the area, and allegedly some was deposited on the cinder pitch to a considerable height. The argument was that afterwards the ground was so contaminated that children couldn't play football on it again. The council either planted standard trees or allowed natural regeneration — and now it's a forest.

Here is the Frying Pan as I knew it in the 50s and 60s — a flat, sandy bottom, occasionally holding water that would drain away quickly. You'd say it was never a lake. Now, over twenty or thirty years, nature has returned.

Dutch elm disease: Bolingbroke Grove was originally lined with parallel rows of elm trees, all chopped down. Does anyone remember that? The result is the wide expanse of pavement along there without any trees. A long history.

Any photographs of the Great Storm of 1987? Any memories?

Here is the lake — or pond, as we used to call it. Very barren around the edges when I was young. The three-island pond. I don't think anyone will remember boats on it, but I do remember fishing for sticklebacks there. Now it's the subject of magazine articles about how children suffer from nature-deprivation syndrome.

It was also a famous lake for carp — fishing stories very welcome. Prefabs: there were rows of them all around the Common. I don't know who the people in this photograph are, and I'd love to find out. White dots running up Bing Brook Grove and all the way along Bellevue. The aerial photograph from 1948 shows the double rows of prefabs across our area.

This is Trinity Road, more or less dead straight. Until the late 1960s it stopped short on the north side and did a funny bend — you can see why from 19th-century maps: there was a great lake at the top. That's what it looked like standing near the County Arms, looking straight up Trinity Road. Then, in the late 60s, the dual carriageway and underpass were put in. The view in the background is completely different today.

This old map shows what we called Marcilly Road — also known as St Ann's Road — curving across. The No. 19 bus used to take that route. Now it's a [stranded?]and lovely avenue of plane trees, completely isolated. The underpass was so grim that Stanley Kubrick used it — several of the underpasses — in A Clockwork Orange.

Changes to the Windmill: thanks to the Windmill Society and others it was protected, though the council planted trees all around it. This photograph fascinates me — it shows children by the railway line, with the windmill visible, and beyond it Emanuel School still with its tower, which was there until the early 1930s.

Great changes to the playgrounds. Lots of planting, soft surfaces. This image — almost unique, I think — shows what we used to call the Logs Playground, probably built around 1980. Concentric, almost like a Neolithic encampment. I was told I'm wrong, but I believed the Great Storm destroyed it and that the new playground was built further over on what had been a putting green — I remember it as a putting green.

And here is a random aerial shot of the Common roughly as we know it today: Emanuel School at the top, the railway lines forking, Spencer Park, and the main sporting area.

This is the only photograph I know of the Royal Victoria Patriotic Building. Behind it was Spencer Park Boys' School, which some people here attended.

This is the old Bellevue Tavern — now very different. We've collected a lot of information about Bellevue, but what I'd really like is information about the row of shops opposite the County Arms. The one on the left is still an off-licence — it used to be Mr Haddock's shop, where I worked as a child. There was a baker's with a post office, and Gaudion's fruit and veg shop. It would be lovely to reconstruct the history of those shops, just as Steven has lovingly done for the Bellevue Road shops.

This is the only picture I could find of a park-keeper. He would have been furious about the need for police on the Common.

This was a demonstration against Crossrail 2 — which might be called the King Charles Line if it's ever completed.

I'm fascinated by the way people use park benches to commemorate loved ones.

This references the last day of steam on the railway — 1967, extraordinarily recent. Boys from Emanuel School used to stand at the end of the drive and love watching the steam trains. But there is a dark side too: the Clapham rail crash, the IRA explosion near Wandsworth Common station. The last execution at Wandsworth Prison was in 1962. And there is the escape of Ronnie Biggs.

We often talk about Bolingbroke Hospital but rarely about St James's Hospital — I was in both at different times, so it matters to me. These are pictures associated with St James's: it had been a workhouse infirmary but was substantially upgraded, and then they closed it, knocked it down, and transferred the facilities to the new St George's. This is all that remains — the ambulance entrance at the back.

Popular music. Now this is slightly surprising: the Downliners Sect were prominent in the early 1960s, and St Mary Magdalene Church was genuinely a cradle of British rhythm and blues. This is Jimmy Page on Wandsworth Common playing his Gretsch guitar. And this is a Paul McCartney video, Waterfalls, filmed on Wandsworth Common.

A quick sprint through Neal's Lodge and its changing functions. A spectral figure at St Mary's. Ravenslea House, now the Latter-day Saints church on the corner. A former synagogue, open until around the 1950s. The last image is Bolingbroke Hospital — and the NatureScope where we are now — which has its own interesting history.

And just to close: in March, Doreen Evans will be commemorated with a plaque on the corner of Allfarthing Road, where her family had a garage. She was a famous racing driver.

I arrived in the area in 1971. The cinder patch was there but nobody played on it — it wasn't an attractive surface. We always wondered what it was for. Its heyday, in a strange way, came when it became a temporary rubbish tip, piled at least two or two-and-a-half metres high. I may have some old slides — I can't promise photographs, but I'll have a look.

When the rubbish was cleared, the cinders effectively disappeared under the forklift trucks and the area was then heavily planted with silver birch. What you see now are the remains of those silver birches after forty or fifty years — grown wild, with paths running through them.

A very brief memory. It must have been late 50s or early 60s. My dad used to go along every Sunday morning to watch football on the cinder patch. I never went with him. He used to come home really cold and wet. I'd ask why he kept going and he'd say he liked to keep up with the football.

First, apologies for my late arrival. I remember that area of the Common — we used to call it Bushy Common. When I was at Sternfeld Junior School, a friend who lived off Magdalen Road and I used to go up there and climb trees. From my memory there were hawthorn trees — it was very bushy. Around that time there was a nasty murder there: a lady wearing red clothes and red shoes. Because the bushes came so close to the road, a lot were cut back so people walking along the pavement were not obscured — something similar had happened to my sister and me walking along that stretch. As for the cinders: I had four brothers and I don't remember any of them playing on those cinders. They tended to go to the Frying Pan instead.

I walked across the Common on the way back from school during the rubbish period and I remember the heaps being very high. At some point in the 70s, when I was in the Guides, we used to play games on the Common — so the scope must have been clear enough to run around on by then.

I played football there — with Cubs or Life Boys — and it was lethal. As soon as you fell, and you always fell, you were lacerated because the surface was very hard. About the bushes: there were lots of gorse bushes, often very large, and they would burn — sometimes children set fire to them, or they seemed to spontaneously combust. They were cut back at various times because of fears about safety.

Two minor additions. In the middle of the scope there is a small open patch that used to have quite a special grass growing in clumps — millennia grass — which was occasionally cleared. The clumps seem to have disappeared and nobody seems to be encouraging them back. Also, the diagonal footpath across the scope used to connect straight across Trinity Road onto the main Common. You could simply walk from the corner of Burwood Lane and Southgate Lane straight across with dogs and children, following the path all the way. That connection has now gone.

I remember the night very clearly. We lived in Westover Road and slept on the third floor. During the night we heard a great roaring in the chimney stack and were woken by it. In the morning I looked out and saw trees crashed down in Westover Road, on some people's cars — not ours, luckily. Later I walked over to this side of the Common and met a neighbour, and we were both amazed: great clumps of trees had suddenly become low bushes. It changed the aspect of the Common radically, and so fast. It was extraordinary.

On the morning of the storm I got up to get my elder son off to school in Sheen. The lights were out. I sent him to the station, and shortly afterwards he reappeared: no trains, no school. I was teaching at Honeywell at the time. The headmistress was so determined to reach school — worried about the children — that she made her taxi driver drive across the grass on the Common to get her there. When I arrived there were virtually no other staff. Some parents had already dropped their children in the playground. I was left looking after a miscellaneous group of children while the headmistress phoned parents, asking them to collect them — no heating, no school dinners. One parent was a carer and couldn't come, so her twin boys had to stay.

My husband did wonderful business repairing smashed cars — he worked in a garage at the time. We went around the Common taking photographs of fallen trees: by the Cat's Back Bridge, roads blocked in both directions, and so on. I've got another batch of pictures I can share.

I live just off Westside. My son woke me while it was still dark — his windows had been blown in and he was cold. My niece was a student living with us at the time. She left early for college and came straight back: trees everywhere, on top of the cars. When it was light we went to look at the magnificent chestnuts opposite Westside — that little path that goes through to the cottages — and they had been blown down. It was very sad. I probably have photographs of trees on top of cars as well.

Dutch elm disease — does anyone remember the elm avenues and their destruction?

Other than to say I was very upset at the time, that's all.

I have two memories — one about using the Common for recreation, one about avoiding it. I was a pupil at what is now Ernest Bevin School, then known as Bec Grammar. We were sent on cross-country runs across Wandsworth Common: out along Beechcroft Road, across Trinity Road, across the Common to the Cat's Back Bridge, back along the railway, up St James's Drive, and back to school. Some of us worked out that if you cut down a side street, crossed Trinity Road, and waited for the runners returning up St James's Drive, you could tag on the end. That worked until the teachers noticed and sent us on a longer route with a PE master stationed at intervals to tick names off.

A much fonder memory: I was in the Boys' Brigade. Our first cricket match of the season was on the Common. I was fourteen, opening the batting, and scored 28 runs. If you scored double your age you got a cap — I never received it. I opened for the rest of the season and I don't think I got into double figures again, but I have a very fond memory of that day on the cricket pitches, which are where the dog-free zone is now.

Just following on — there were also far more basic pitches on the Common. In the 60s, when I was at Belleville School, there were simply white lines marked out on Bolingbroke Field. We walked up twice a week to play cricket in the third and fourth year. Basic protective gear, basic pitches.

I think the biggest change from the 60s to today is that children can't go and play on their own. We've lost sports grounds, we've lost workplace teams. Things are now concentrated into a smaller number of clubs. For children, sport involves being coached — you get intensive use by organisations like Broomwood and Fit for Kids, which have replaced what children would once have done spontaneously. There is much less freedom. Kids used to go out, make up their own games, referee themselves, and learn what to do.

Relatedly, schools that occupy buildings not designed for schools — without outside playing space — use the Common as their playground and sports ground. Dolphin School and Bolingbroke School use it for play; so does Broomwood. This creates intense pressure on particular areas, and at crossing points there is real erosion of the grass, particularly in wet weather.

I have caught a fish on Wandsworth Common — very proud of that. And I remember sports days at Haverstock School — now Hornsby House — around 1961–63. In the later years we had a sports day on the Common, opposite the White House: a six-lane track, egg-and-spoon races, sack races.

I remember the triangle at the corner of Nightingale Lane and Bolingbroke Well. It was fenced in and only women and children were allowed to play there — no men, no ball games. A safe area. It was observed and kept that way. My brother was born in 1963 and the enclosure certainly still existed around that time. There was a fence with a gate opening onto the Common, not the road.

Almost all organised sport on the Common was for boys — football, cricket. Hardly anything for girls. I do have a photograph of girls playing hockey — Edwardian or 1920s. And another memory: on Thursday evenings, Wandle Hall used to troop down to the Common for rounders. I wasn't part of Wandle Hall but I tagged along. I agree: I don't think I personally had any structured sport on the Common as a girl.

Clapham County — now Thomas's School on Broomwood Road — did have formal tennis lessons on the tennis courts here in the 60s, and we came here for that. And Honeywell, throughout the 39 years I was there, always held a sports day on the Common — the council would paint the running lines for us. I've got photographs. Schools did pay to use the Common: Honeywell paid for its sports day pitch.

Two small additions. To the left of the red circle you can see on the photograph, where the path curves into the bushes, there used to be a public toilet removed in the early 1970s. There was another one past the Cat's Back Bridge, along the path by the railway line. Both were removed; the drains are probably still there, and bits of brickwork from the foundations remain in both places.

A question about cricket. I have a clear — though fairly hazy — recollection of a hard-surface cricket wicket in the part of the Common to the west of Trinity Road and north of Windmill Road. A 22-yard strip of tarmac in the middle of that green space. It existed into the 1960s. Does anyone else remember it?

On fishing and recreation: in the great winter of 1962–63, the pond — now the lake — froze over. I remember my father among others skating on it. I fell and grazed my knee because I was only four or five and wearing shorts.

Something I'd forgotten — the old Windmill Road nursery, soon to be a café, was purpose-built as changing rooms for the Common and was still in use at weekends into the 1980s. I don't know whether anyone used them. There was also a large wooden changing room near the Hope, which burnt down.

On the social-change point about children not playing outside unsupervised: it's a huge change for parents too. They have to accompany their children. I've sat in so many playgrounds with groups of parents — plenty of good photographic material there.

Playing devil's advocate: there is no evidence that crime against children outdoors has increased. Based on available research and police-recorded crime data, there is no clear evidence that outdoor attacks on children by strangers have significantly increased over the last thirty to fifty years. There was an increase in recorded abductions in the 2010s, but that reflected better public reporting rather than a real rise. The 'stranger danger' fear is not supported by statistics.

But is that not partly because children are accompanied? [Discussion followed.]

Regarding the main playground by the lake: in the 60s there was a golf putting green there. I've got a photograph of one of my brothers playing. Before the playground, it was the putting green.

I remember my children playing on that playground in the early 1990s — they were born in the late 80s.

I believe the playground was moved for biodiversity reasons by Valerie Selby — a definitive decision by the biodiversity team. We can ask her to confirm.

The Bolingbroke Bowls Club was here until 2020 and had just celebrated its centenary. Before that there was Trinity Bowls Club, and I believe there was also a women's bowls club. Any memories or photographs of those would be very welcome.

When we were children in the 50s, the bowling green was beautiful — lovely gardens — but children under 15 were not even allowed to walk the path around it, let alone go through the gate. The park-keepers cycled around making sure you behaved.

About the cricket pitch: in the 1940s my father and one of my uncles started a cricket club they called the Baskerville Cricket Club, with the red hound from the Baskervilles as their badge. They played here quite regularly, though visiting teams complained because the ground had been dug up for allotments during the war and the surface wasn't flat. The club probably disbanded in the early 1960s. And at the Queen's Silver Jubilee in 1977 they held a party on the bowling green for the Toast Rack, with games, races, and my brother's band playing.

We're not entirely certain when the last prefab on the Common disappeared. Our book suggests they were being removed from around 1956 to the mid-60s; another source suggests the final ones went in 1966. Can anyone help establish the dates?

My family moved into Ravenslea Road in 1956 and my mother has no recollection of prefabs on Bellevue Road or Bolingbroke Grove. She could well be wrong, but she doesn't remember them.

Maps sometimes pre-record events, so a 1948 map might show proposed rather than existing buildings. I'll look at the aerial photographs. But we do have people in our film who talk vividly about living in those prefabs along Bellevue Road and Bing Grove.

I have a Honeywell Secondary School register — the school was housed in the Patriotic Building at the time — and some children's addresses list Bolingbroke Bungalows, which were the prefabs. My own memory: my eldest brother and I used to play in the prefabs while they were being demolished — the ones past the Cat's Back Bridge, down the straight path on the left. We went exploring in summer, with bare arms, and came home with fibreglass embedded in our skin. There was asbestos too, though we didn't know that. This was before I went to secondary school in 1958, so it was before that date.

The various incarnations of the café in the White Lodge — now Skylark. Before that it was Common Ground. In the 1970s it was widely known as the White House, though that wasn't the official name.

In the late 50s it was called Neil's Lodge and was run by the London County Council, which had cafés in similar buildings on Commons across London, with prescribed prices for every item. I have photographs of my mother and a friend eating ice creams outside, and of me playing at the tennis courts nearby — that would be around 1957–58. When Neil's Lodge closed, probably in the early 60s, it came up for sale. My mother actually applied to be the headmistress of a nursery school there but couldn't afford the price. I have very fond memories of ice creams and orangeade — it was a casual, pleasant café. The connection to the Neil family is a long one: the Neils ran nurseries and market gardens around here since at least the early 19th century, and intermarried with the Roughs. Buckmaster had a big florist and conservatory on Trinity Road — next to the church — which is now a French café.

I remember there being a diagonal road across the Common where there is now an avenue of trees — St Ann's Road. We lived in St Donat's Grove and used to walk that way over to the Common.

St Ann's Road was closed around 1970. There used to be a large public toilet block on that side too. When Trinity Road was widened, there was a statutory requirement to compensate for any loss of common land. The compensation included: the former Marceli Road strip, the prison banks — the hilly area to the west — and the saving of the entire row of Heathfield Gardens houses, which were originally going to be demolished. The small dog-free area behind those houses was once part of their gardens; the wall alongside it was the garden wall of the last house. Those were the bargaining chips for the construction of the dual carriageway. I think it was poor compensation for the devastation caused.

Does anyone remember the petition for a pedestrian crossing from the scope across Trinity Road to the main Common? There was a long stretch with no crossing at all until you reached Ralph Road. The campaign took several years, but we got the crossing that's there now.

A quick one: I was knocked down by a car and was one of the people whose experience contributed to a crossing being built at the top of what used to be called Nicosia Road. It was extraordinary how long that struggle went on. It also made sense because it allowed safe crossing from Magdalen Road. I ended up in St James's Hospital — so that's another connection for me.

Before the dual carriageway was built, Neil's Nursery came right up to what was then Trinity Road. To the right of the County Arms there was a small outdoor seating area, and that's where the cattle trough was — they moved it into the gardens and now it's in front of the County Arms. When the road was widened, that garden area was lost. There was also a road running straight from the front of the prison down to Trinity Road — I believe it was still there when Ronnie Biggs escaped, and he used it. You can still see where it was: there's an avenue of trees either side partway down. I gave Philip a photograph I took at the time showing the view straight through to the prison from Trinity Road.

Two film references. Brannigan (1975), with John Wayne and Richard Attenborough, includes a car chase along Trinity Road. And Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971), with Glenda Jackson and Peter Finch, was partly shot on the Common — they come out of a house near where Gordon Ramsay lives now, and there is a panoramic shot all the way across to Trinity Road. There is a wonderful website called Reel Streets where you can search by location; put in Wandsworth Common and it will show all the scenes filmed there, and invite you to photograph the same view today.

In the early 1980s I was involved in the Wandsworth Cycling Campaign, part of the London Cycling Campaign. We made quite a fuss about wanting to cycle across Wandsworth Common — I remember being filmed doing it and getting into the local paper. We met with the then chief parks officer and Councillor Andrew Grant of Northcote Ward. The Conservative council took some pains to explain the chicanes on the Cat's Back Bridge, insisting that someone had taken a motorbike over at night trying to perform a flying leap. That was why the restrictions were in place. I have to admit we did have ourselves photographed cycling across the Common when it wasn't permitted.

I remember that campaign. The Wandsworth Society argued that if paths were formally delineated they would look like roads, which was against the spirit of the Common. That argument prevailed. Subsequently, the formal path markings have been removed and the Common is more open now.

I also want to mention the railway. The line runs behind my house, and further along — going towards Windmill Road — was where the terrible Clapham rail crash occurred. I was at home at the time and heard it. I rushed out and the Emanuel boys — I think it was only boys then — were out there helping to rescue badly injured passengers. A very nice memorial has been placed there and until recently was visited each year, with people leaving flowers.

I have original plans at home — unfortunately in plant chests in Cornwall — for the full Ringways scheme. It is very interesting, because the map showed both an inner and an outer ring road. The outer Ringway was to run right through the centre of Wandsworth town, along Garratt Lane and Norie Road in Putney, clearing at least one side of the road alongside the South Western Railway. Wandsworth Bridge was to be widened, with an extension taking the road northwards to join routes in Fulham and Hammersmith. From Battersea, the outer box was to run all the way through into central Wandsworth. Trinity Road was to be extended down to Streatham; Burntwood Lane was to be widened, as was Nightingale Lane, to join the A24 at Clapham, creating a branch to Wimbledon. A big motorway interchange was planned near Wandsworth Park, with a motorway running along the east side of the Wimbledon ridge all the way through Southfields. When I first got involved with the Wandsworth Society, there was a huge model in the Town Hall showing all this — the motorways, the housing that would have been destroyed. I didn't have a camera at the time, so I have no photograph of it.

Just on transport — one piece of urbanism I really disliked was the access road serving the Fairview development at Spencer Park, which I objected to at the time even while working in Wandsworth's planning department. It serves only as an access road and was placed there because it was deemed inappropriate to continue using the existing access through the Fitzu estate. Emanuel School also has a bridge that I consider very much over-specified. I believe I know why: after the Clapham rail crash, the embankment had to be completely reconstructed with heavy equipment. The story as I was told it is that Emanuel School agreed to provide access across their land in exchange for a first-class footbridge, giving Network Rail the access it needed to the southern side of the line — access that would otherwise have been extremely difficult via the narrow entrance at Paisley Rise.

The Royal Victoria Patriotic Building: from the age of seven I was a Brownie, and our meetings were held in the very derelict main hall — pretty atmospheric in the late 60s and 70s. We used to spend a lot of time looking for the ghost. It was genuinely exciting to know there really is a story. And something else that wouldn't happen today: we were sent out as small children — seven, eight years old — unaccompanied, to knock on doors all over the Fitzu estate collecting jumble, put it in the lifts, and send it down, while a parent waited at the bottom with a car. Bit scary.

Does anyone remember the fire at the Royal Victoria Patriotic Building?

I would love to hear more stories about Charlotte Bennett — the ghost of the RVP Building. I've been researching her in some detail and am interested in how those stories have been retold and embellished over time. Please do get in touch if you have any.

My memory is of St James's Hospital. Soon after I arrived in this country from France — in 1978 — I was knocked off my bike near Clapham Common and taken there by ambulance.

I came to Wandsworth in 1980–81 and remember being thrown out of the Bolingbroke pub with my newborn daughter strapped under my coat — it was January. I also remember the IRA bomb factory discovered in the flats along Northcote Road. The whole of Bramfield Road was cordoned off for a very long time.

As I understand it, a policeman came across an IRA man sleeping in his car on Bellevue Road, knocked on the window, and the man had a gun and shot the policeman. That is how the bomb factory was discovered. I also have a vague memory that, many years later, when someone moved into the flat, they found weapons in an air vent that the police had missed at the time.

Does anyone remember the IRA bomb on Wandsworth Common — I think in 1992, near the sidings by the Cat's Back Bridge? Was the target the electric substation? [Discussion — unclear.] Does anyone remember it being reported at the time?

One of my former clients lived in the house on St James's Drive with the great cedar tree on the corner. After the IRA activities we've just been discussing, MI5 or MI6 set up a covert surveillance unit in their property to photograph a flat in the development opposite, where they believed IRA suspects were staying. That unit was in place for at least two months.

I remember the building after the police discovery. One of the panels under a window had been removed and remained missing for quite some time — you could see it as you walked past. Reading the local paper at the time, I was aware of what it meant.

I came to Wandsworth around 1974 and there were small shopping parades all over the area. Balham Road near my home had everything you needed: a butcher, post office, fruit shop, even a paraffin shop. If you're covering shops as a section, it might be worth looking at how many of these little local parades existed across the area.

Worth noting: this year's heritage festival theme is shops and retail, so there will be plenty of activity around that.

The three-cornered grass area opposite the Roundhouse — does anyone know much about it? Does it count as part of Wandsworth Common?

Yes, it does. Wandsworth Common was once intact, but railways, roads, and the creation of Spencer Park created all these little enclaves. That triangle exists partly because the Wandsworth–Battersea boundary runs along one side of it: Spencer Park starts on the Battersea side, which is why it doesn't extend to that far corner. As a teenager I used a metal detector there and found loads of Victorian and Edwardian pennies. Perhaps there was once a fair on that spot.

I'm afraid we've reached seven o'clock. We've barely scratched the surface of the agenda, but the conversation has been wonderful. Would people like another gathering? Good. In the meantime, please do send any further memories, photographs, or information to history@wandsworthcommon.org. We will be in touch to arrange another meeting to cover everything we didn't reach tonight. Thank you all very much.