Tag Archives: 1928

Mitcham Athletic Club

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The Mitcham Athletic Club had been formed in 1920, according to this letter head from 1938:

letter head from an award made in 1938

The club’s motto was Nil Desperandum, never despair.

From the Mitcham Youth Handbook of 1949

MITCHAM ATHLETIC CLUB

This nationally famous Athletic Club, numbering many Olympic and international athletes among its members, has a considerable youth section. It gives coaching to young athletes and runs a scholar-ship scheme by which promising youngsters are given free membership of the Club for a year. During the summer meetings are all out-doors at the News of the World track on Tuesday, Thursday and alternate Monday evenings. During the winter meetings are held on Thursday evenings from 8.0 to 10.0 p.m. in Bond Road School. The Club organises games activities as well as athletics and enters a team in the Youth Council netball league. Club members assist at nearly every sports meeting held in the area. Enquiries to the Secretary, Mr. L. E. Oliver, 33 Burleigh Avenue, Wallington.

Source: Local Studies Centre, Morden Library, Civic Centre, Morden.
Reference: L2 (369) MIT

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News Articles

ATHLETE MARRIES ATHLETE

Miss Dorothy Proctor, of the Middlesex Ladies’ Athletic Club, and British quarter mile champion in 1827, was married on Saturday, at St. George’s Church, Headstone Middlesex, to Mr. Norman Gunn, who was half-mile champion of Surrey last year. Mr. Gunn is a brother of Miss Muriel Gunn, now Mrs. Cornell, of the Mitcham Athletic Club, the women’s long-jump champion of the world.

Source: Shepton Mallet Journal – Friday 21 December 1928 from the British Newspaper Archive

From the Daily Express, 19th May 1936:

Athlete Killed By Lightning

Lightning is believed to have killed Robert CROMBIE, of Figges-road, Mitcham (Surrey), member of Mitcham Athletic Club, whose body, marked across one shoulder, was found under a tree in Netley Woods, near Guildford, yesterday.

Crombie had been for a walk.

He ran at the White City on Saturday. On March 21, he leaped 21ft. 3ins., to win the A.A.A. indoor championship long jump.

From the Daily Express, 22nd May 1936:

Killed by lightning
When Neck was wet

Raindrops which collected on a man’s neck led to his death when he was sheltering under trees from a thunderstorm.

This was mentioned at the inquest at Shelford, Guildford, yesterday, on Roberts Creswell Crombie, age 25, or Figges Road, Mitchem and a verdict of “Accidental death,” was returned.

AN ATHLETE

Crombie, a prominent Surrey athlete, left a party of friends to shelter in Netley Woods, Shere. He was found dead by a woman picking wild flowers after the storm.

Dr Eric Gardner, of Weybridge, stated that the lightning took a diagonal course from the left side from his neck to his right leg. in addition to the burns on his neck there were other marks where his soaking clothing would have touched his body.

He added to a penknife, key ring and steel key found on Crombie were very powerfully magnetised, indicating that the body had been struck by lightning.

The Brampton Connection

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Overheard on an S1 bus recently, as it passed the Wilson Hospital:

“Wilson Hospital?”
“Which Wilson was that then?”
“Harold Wilson?”

Named after Isaac Wilson, the Wilson Cottage Hospital in Cranmer Road, was opened in 1928. He paid £60,000 for the land and its construction. In 1933, he donated a further £10,000 for an extension to the hospital.

The Cumberland Hospital, built in the grounds of his house Birches, was named after his home county.

Eric Montague, in his Mitcham Histories book “The Cricket Green”, tells us that Isaac Wilson was born in 1862 in Milton, near Carlisle, one of four sons of a Cumbrian farmer. His brothers persuaded him to join them in London, where their building business was flourishing.

For a time Isaac and his wife Sarah lived at Fulham and then, in the early 1900s, they moved to Gorringe Park Avenue in Mitcham. Whilst living there the Wilsons became active members of St. Barnabas church and many of the houses in the vicinity were built by them.

He lived at ‘The Hut’, later numbered 185 Commonside East, on the western corner of Cedars Avenue, until 1928. He then lived at The Birches, built by his firm in Lower Green East. This road was renamed to Cricket Green in 1944 after a suggestion by Lady Robertson.

An idea of the size of their enterprise can found in the local newspaper report on the Mitcham Military Service Tribunal in 1916, when Joseph Wilson asked that his last employee left be given exemption. Mr Wilson said that before the war he had a staff of 40, and there were around 1,000 houses to be kept in repair.

Isaac Wilson also funded the building of 56 houses for the elderly, the Mitcham Garden Village, which was opened in 1930.

A similar development of 24 homes in Brampton, near his home town of Milton, Cumbria, called the Wilson Memorial Homes, was built in 1930.

Back to Mitcham, and the house at the corner of Cold Blows, currently a nursery, was originally called Brampton. Montague says it was believed to have been built by the Wilson firm, which, given its name, is quite likely. See 1953 OS Map.