Tag Archives: 1929

Plummer Lane

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Road running north-westerly from Bond Road and Eveline Road.

Possibly built by H. Paulson in around 1926/7. A terrace of six houses on each side of the road, numbered odd on the west side, as 1 to 11 going north, and even on the east side 2 to 12. Royal Mail postcode lookup in 2017 shows 13 properties in CR4 3HR, with the addition of 2A.

1951 OS map

From the minutes of the Mitcham Urban District Council, Highways and Buildings Committee, on 7th November, 1929, page 469, the residents of Plummer Lane had written to the council asking for it to be renamed. The council said that:

the name was originally suggested to perpetuate the name of the Plummer family, who had left certain moneys for the benefit of the parish, which moneys are included in the sum administered by the Trustees of the Mitcham United Charities. … the residents were to be informed that the Committee saw no adequate reason for any change.

Thomas Plummer’s charity was created out of his will of 1641. Bread was to be handed out by the parish church, every Sunday, to the local poor. Source: Reports of the Commissioners Appointed in Pursuance of Acts of … concerning Charities and Education of The Poor, Volume 33.

News Articles

Dundee Evening Telegraph – Thursday 30 August 1928 (via the British Newspaper archive)

GIRL DRAGGED ALONG BY MOTOR CAR MUDGUARD.

As an ambulance was returning along London Road, Mitcham, with an accident case the driver, E. Hedger, heard a bump, and saw in his mirror a girl being carried along on the mudguard of a motor car that had just passed him. He stopped the ambulance, and picked up Hettie Sinclair, of Plummer Lane, Mitcham, who after stepping off a tramcar was caught by the motor car.

“It is my 14th birthday to-day,” she said as she was being taken to a doctor for treatment. She was taken home in the ambulance.

Maps are reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland.

Minutes of meetings held by the Mitcham Urban District Council are available on request from the Merton Heritage and Local Studies Centre at Morden Library.

1929 : Lonesome School teachers in car crash

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MOTORING THRILL.

Mitcham Teachers in Fall Over Embankment.

Two young members of the teaching staff at Lonesome School, Mitcham, had an extraordinary adventure after leaving the school on Tuesday afternoon.

Shortly before five p.m. a Baby Austin saloon car in which they were riding crashed through the stout wooden fence on the eastern corner of the Bee Hive railway bridge and plunged down the very steep embankment on to the small plot of waste ground at the rear of the new houses in Spencer-road.

The car reached the bottom of the embankment, estimated to be seventeen feet in depth, right side up, fortunately.

The teachers were Miss Ivy Green, aged twenty-three, of 61, Elsted-street, Walworth, who was driving, and Miss Mary Runnacuss, aged twenty-one, of Defoe-road, Tooting. The car belonged to Miss Smythe, of 21, Tunney-road, East Dulwich, the well known and popular head mistress of Lonesome School, who was severely injured herself in a motor accident some time ago at Eastfields level crossing. She had lent her car to her two assistants for an hour while Miss Green was learning to drive. Miss Runnacuss was her instructress.
Neither of the girls was hurt in the least and scarcely suffered from shock. The only damage to the car was a smashed wind-screen.

Mr. George Mountain, of Smith’s Buildings, Commonside East, road foreman in the employ of the Urban Council, told the “Advertiser” that he saw the car crossing the bridge as a motor lorry was ascending from Grove-road. “The motorists,” he said, “evidently caught sight of the lorry as they turned into Grove-road, made a big swerve to avoid it and crashed through the fence doing so. If their car had struck the lamp-post inside the fence it must have turned turtle. I rushed to help the girls and thought they must certainly be seriously injured, but to my great astonishment both were calmly sitting in the car, and actually smiling! They displayed great nerve and coolness all through.”

Another witness said Miss Green remarked : ” I am glad the old ‘bus did not turn over at any rate.”

Half a dozen men, with Mr. Mountain, assisted the girls to get the car out of the “rough” into the narrow passage between the end house occupied-by Mr. and Mrs. Hayne, No. 1. Spencer-road, and the bottom of the embankment. The girls then drove it away. Miss Green gaily waving her hand to her helpers as she left!

A larger car could not have been got out of the well formed by the embankment and the houses, except with the aid of a crane.

Both teachers returned to duty at Lonesome School next morning, but the head mistress had to drive a motor cycle instead of her Austin seven.

Mitcham Advertiser, 17th October, 1929, page 6