Wandsworth Common

The opening year, ere yet its advent had been many hours proclaimed, saw the death of one of the oldest inhabitants of South London — Mr Robert Neal, a gentleman whose early industry created the firm which, under the title of Messrs B. and G. Neal, the well-known contractors and proprietors of the Wandsworth Common Nurseries, has assumed mammoth proportions.

On Saturday a public meeting was held at House, Wandsworth Common, at which Sir Trevor Lawrence MP presided [illeg. — remainder of report not preserved in source].

Advertisement: Wandsworth Equitable Permanent Building Society, 2 Field Terrace, Wandsworth. Trustees: Robert Davis Esq., Earlsfield, Wandsworth Common; John Hennell Esq., Rosehill Road. Shares £20 each, secured by one payment of £10 or a monthly subscription of 8d. for [illeg.] years. Interest 5 per cent., simple or compound. Money advanced on security of land or buildings at very low rates. Deposits of £20 and upwards taken. — K. Simmonds, Secretary.

"I understand it is intended to nominate Mr Cameron, of Bolingbroke Grove, as one of the Wandsworth Common Conservators at the next annual meeting, vice Mr Du Buisson, deceased. The selection is by no means a bad one. Mr Cameron is certain to watch the interests of the ratepayers, and the ratepayers of the district in which he resides could do far worse than send him to the Battersea Vestry. He would make an excellent aide-de-camp to Mr Cleave, who, a little bird whispers me, is likely to return to the Vestry during the present year."

"The attempt made some time ago by a local cricket club to appropriate a portion of Wandsworth Common to what was practically their own uses signally failed, owing to the wholesome opposition it engendered. Better fate [illeg. — remainder of article not preserved in source]."

"This is the site of Trigg's Repository." So runneth an announcement placed upon the dilapidated buildings opposite the cemetery at Battersea Rise. It is satisfactory, certainly, to know that this positive eyesore will at some date, distant or otherwise, be removed. The old ramshackle structures which now disgrace and disfigure the spot have stood quite long enough; and it would indeed be a happy relief to the inhabitants in the neighbourhood if they found them improved for ever from the face of the Wandsworth Common earth.

"Have any of my readers ever attempted to visit Wandsworth Lunatic Asylum on a dark and gusty night? If not, take my advice and don't make the experiment. Of all heaven-forsaken places, Wandsworth Common railway station in the dark appeared to be the worst. How it looks in the daytime I cannot tell; but when I was shot out on to the Common, and left to my own devices as to finding the whereabouts of the asylum, and could see nothing around me but gloomy [illeg.], with a light or two glimmering in the far distance, with the wind and rain contending for mastery, and with no umbrella, I felt as much inclined to use strong language as ever I did in my life."

Notice given that the Wandsworth Common Conservators had appointed Wednesday 17 March, at the office in All Farthing Lane, St Anne's Hill, for the election of a Conservator in the place of James Du Buisson Esquire, deceased.

The Battersea Cemetery Committee was still actively engaged in attempting to find a suitable site for the proposed new burying ground. They had under consideration a piece of land at Mitcham, and were also turning their attention to the Garratt Lane site, the property of Mr Davis of Earlsfield House, Wandsworth Common, who had offered them thirty acres at a reduced price.

The annual report of the Conservators, adopted unanimously at the public meeting held last week, was also of especial interest in that some inhabitants thought it desirable for the Metropolitan Board of Works to take over the custody of the Common.

[This relatively informal pitch continued in use for many years — much to the annoyance of some local people, such as Mrs Nixon, who around 1880 lived in the nearest house in Heathfield Cottages and was tired of retrieving cricket balls batted over her wall. She soon moved, but later a wire-mesh fence was erected, and residents of the Cottages were given one shilling a year in compensation. The 1881 Census shows Frances Nixon as a 45-year-old widow of independent means, living with three daughters (20, 19, 16) and a widower brother (39). She was still there in 1883, mis-spelt as Mrs Nickson. But she'd gone by 1891. This is also the ground on which the Wandsworth tradesmen played prior to the 1863 meeting with John Buckmaster at the County Arms to plot a defence of the Common. See 1827 for mention of the "Wandsworth New Ground," where the MCC presumably played.]

[Hardy's house at Upper Tooting stood in a rather elevated position — near the southern edge of Wandsworth Common, close to the highest point around our area — and when the air was clear they could see a long way from the top windows. The following note on London at dawn occurs on 19 May 1880, a night on which he could not sleep, partly on account of an eerie feeling which sometimes haunted him, a horror at lying down in close proximity to "a monster whose body had four million heads and eight million eyes":]

A long letter from Charles Kirkland, dated 17 May, argued urgently in favour of a local cemetery for Battersea. The vestry had decided by a majority of 19 in favour of a new cemetery and instructed the Burial Board to negotiate for the Earlsfield Estate, but opponents were now trying to reverse the decision on grounds of alleged procedural irregularity.

The opposition of the Wandsworth people to the Battersea Cemetery Scheme was growing in intensity. The Wandsworth Vestry had passed a resolution to oppose the cemetery on sanitary grounds — a "dog-in-the-manger policy," the South London Press thought, inasmuch as Wandsworth had recently laid out a cemetery of its own immediately adjacent. "It would at any rate have been more gracious on the part of the Wandsworth Vestry to have first intimated their objection to their neighbours before endeavouring to obtain the intervention of Sir William Harcourt."

The cemetery controversy continued with a public meeting at which Mr Edward Wood — who had lived nine years close to the present cemetery with no ill effects — challenged the opponents' "nuisance" claims. Mr Tully had magnified the proposed expenditure to £70,000; Mr Cooke had alleged the neighbourhood had been a "den of fever" three or four years earlier, a claim immediately and flatly denied by Dr Oakman, the district medical officer of health. The South London Press concluded: "Before it is decided to go to Woking, or the inhabitants denied the opportunity of having a local cemetery, their opinion should be more directly expressed, and some of the 'cobwebs' swept away."

Sir H. Peek raised the matter in the House of Commons, asking whether the Home Secretary was aware that the proposal to purchase nearly forty acres of land near Wandsworth Common had caused great consternation, inasmuch as there were already seven cemeteries in or close to Wandsworth; and whether the land had a sub-soil of clay.

"The Wandsworth people say they do not want the Battersea dead in their parish. Probably not; it is a sufficiently dead-and-alive place already. Even an additional cemetery, one would have thought, would have improved it, though it could not be said to put more life into the place."

The Rev C. Kirtland presented a petition from inhabitants in favour of a new cemetery, signed by 13 denominational ministers. He moved that the Burial Board be instructed to make further enquiries as to the land at Mitcham, or any other suitable site. Mr Cleave moved an amendment that it was inexpedient, in face of the Home Secretary's decision, to take any further steps; he said it was a question for the ratepayers, and the Ratepayers' Association had decided it was impolitic to provide a new cemetery. Mr Cameron said the question had two heads — the sanitary and the financial — and that a new cemetery could be made to pay. The amendment was lost by 11 to 22, and Mr Kirtland's motion carried.

"It has now been officially notified that the interment in the common ground at Battersea Cemetery must cease. In the reserved ground there is still room for further interments, but even there the space is limited, and first-class fees will have to be paid. That extraordinarily inefficient body of incapables, the Battersea Vestry, have, after their manner of dealing with parochial questions, had the subject under discussion for many months without arriving at any practical issue — a climax hardly to be expected from a body of men who meddle and muddle with almost everything they undertake. What Battersea will do with its dead remains to be seen."