Tag Archives: Barnard Road

Laburnum Road Estate

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Council housing estate built 1954+ on land south and west of the level crossing at Tamworth Lane.

The architects were Collcutt & Hamp, J. Liversedge & Co. were the consulting construction engineers, Mr. H.A. Sandford, M.A. was the consulting electrical engineer and E.C. Harris and Partners the quantity surveyors. Source: Borough Engineer’s Report, 8th September, 1952, as publsihed in Mitcham Borough Council minutes, page 223, volume 19.

Merton Memories Photos

c. 1954 Being built – as seen from railway line
c.1956 Block being built – roof section carried by crane
A completed block seen from railway line
A completed block front view
Two completed blocks
Old peoples’ cottages and a completed block

The land was bought by Mitcham Borough Council using a compulsory purchase order. These council minutes describe the land plots bought, and from whom.

From the minutes of the
Housing Committee
Thursday 2nd July 1953

Laburnum Road Site: Acquisition of Land

The Town Clerk submitted the District Valuer’s reports of the terms of compensation provisionally agreed, subject to the approval of the Council and the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, for the acquisition, under the terms of the Mitcham (Laburnum Road) Compulsory Purchase Order, 1952, of the freehold interest in the undermentioned land required for the development for housing purposes of the Laburnum Road site.

Land owned by Co-operative Wholesale Society Ltd.

5.030 acres approx. of land at Laburnum Road, together with the house known as “Nursery Cottage” and the derelict house adjoining, and also 0.105 acre of land at Laburnum Road, including the building and timber yard known as “The Garage.”

Land Owned by The Misses L.L. and N.A. Allen, as Executors and Trustees of Rebecca Allen, deceased.

0.084 acre approx. of land at Laburnum Road, including the four cottages known as 1,2,3 and 4, Railway Cottages.

Land Owned by Mizen Bros.

0.138 acre approx. of land at the rear of No.s 1-4, Railway Cottages, Laburnum Road, with a frontage to Eastfields Road.

Resolved, That the terms of compensation provisionally agreed be approved by the Council; that authority be given for the acquisition of the land in accordance with these terms; and that the Common Seal of the Corporation be affixed to any necessary documents.

Railway Cottages and Nursery Cottage can be seen on the 1952 OS Map:

The largest plot, roughly triangular, and owned by the Co-Op, had Nissen Huts on it at the time of the purchase. They can be seen in this aerial photo from 1952

Railway Cottages and Nursery Cottage can be seen top left of this photo

1952

1952

The names of the blocks of flats, and old peoples’ cottages, were suggested in January 1954.

From the minutes of the
Housing Committee
7th January 1954

Laburnum Road Estate

The following is a suggested name for the four blocks of flats on the Laburnum Road Estate: –

Laburnum Court
Hardcastle Court
Penfold Court
Guyatt Court

Addition, names are required for the four blocks of aged persons’ dwellings and it is recommended the following names be given to them: –

Lea Cottages
Ryves Cottages
Campbell Cottages
Overhill Cottages

Source: Proceedings of the Council and committees, Mitcham Borough Council, Volume 20 1953-54, page 535.

Resolved:

(i) That the following names be given to the four blocks of flats in the Laburnum Road Estate:

Laburnum Court
Penfold Court
Fitch Court
Beaumont Court

(ii) That the names recommended for the four blocks of aged persons’ dwellings be approved.

Source: Proceedings of the Council and committees, Mitcham Borough Council, Volume 20 1953-54, pages 538.

From Mitcham and Tooting Advertiser
8th July 1954

HOMES OF THEIR OWN AT LAST
First tenants move into town’s newest estate

166 NEW HOMES BY MARCH

THE first tenants moved to Mitcham’s newest estate — Laburnum Road — over the week-end. About a dozen families went into the top-floor flats and maisonnettes of Laburnum Court which is the first block to be completed.

Many had spent years in one and two-room flatlets. Then, after three years or more on the waiting list, they were told by Mitcham Council: ” We have a home for you.” Over the week-end they moved into their bright new flats and maisonnettes, where there are built-in cupboards, large rooms, water heaters, and other amenities they have not known during their married lives.

Eventually the estate, due to be completed by March, will consist of 54 three-bedroom, 84 two-bedroom, and 12 one bedroom flats and maisonnettes, as well as 18 two-storey cottages for old people.

This week the lifts operating from the yellow-tiled entrances to the block were not operating, but the new tenants did not mind climbing four flights of stairs to their homes.

One was Mrs M. L. Gaterall who, with her husband and three children aged from six years to 18 months, had been living in a two-room flat in Kennington, three storeys up. Their chance to move into a decent home came after three years on Mitcham Council’s housing list.

THREE YEAR WAIT

On Monday. Mr R. W. Hayward, a printer’s assistant, moved into one of the maisonnettes with his wife and baby. They had been living in one room in Colliers Wood and they too had been on the waiting list for three years.

Their new home has a living room, modern kitchen, bathroom and two bedrooms. From their back windows they can look out across the roofs of houses in Lammas Avenue and Barnard Road to Commonside East and the common.

Mrs. Hayward had one objection to her new home — in the maisonnettes there are no balconies on which children can be left to play in the open air. They will have to be taken by their mothers down to the lawns which will be laid between the blocks of flats when the estate is finished.

Her husband was pleased with the kitchen. “With all the built-in cupboards, there has been no need to buy any furniture for that room, at least,” he commented.

HAD TO MOVE

Another family who have moved into one of the three-bedroom flats are Mr. and Mrs. E. E. Came and their son and daughter. Another son is still in the Army. They lived in Fortescue Road, but the owner wanted the house. After a year on the waiting list they have been able to move. “It costs us a little more, but it is worth it,” declared Mrs. Came. “The rooms are much larger so that we can lay them out properly and make them look nice. And,” she added, “there is a bathroom.”

In the blue and cream kitchen there is a built-in dresser, larder, broom cupboard, airing cupboard, and an electric immersion heater. In the hall is a gas-heated drying cupboard.

All the new flats and malsonnettes have composition tiled floors width can be polished.

At present, about 180 men are working on the estate, building the remaining blocks of flats, maisonnettes, and old people’s cottages. Their work has not been easy.

While digging the drains, workmen found pieces of old cars, tins, bed-steads and dustbins deep below the surface. At one spot they had to cut a trench through a large area of broken glass. In another place they found a 15-ft. wide stretch of sleepers lying across the path of a deep trench, three feet below the surface. They had to saw, hack and tear their way through the tough wood.

From Mitcham and Tooting Advertiser
4th February 1954

Their names will not be forgotten

Names noted in national and local affairs are honoured by Mitcham Council in the names given to the new blocks of flats on the Laburnum Road Estate and the Baron House Estate in London Road, Lower Mitcham.

The late Mr. Sydney Gedge, of Mitcham Hall, a one-time Member of Parliament and constructor of Mitcham Park, is remembered in Gedge Court on the Baron House Estate opposite his old home. Mitcham’s first Mayor, then Ald. Jack Fitch, and Mr. J. R. Beaumont, also a former Mayor and alderman, are commemorated in Fitch and Beaumont Courts on the Laburnum Road Estate.

The other blocks of flats are named Laburnum Court and Penfold Court (on the Laburnum Estate), Fenning Court and Baron Court (on the Baron House Estate).

The Housing Committee and council also approved the names recommended for the four blocks of dwellings for old people on the Laburnum Road Estate. They will be called Lea Cottages, Ryves Cottages, Campbell Cottages and Overhill Cottages.

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

Lammas Avenue

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Road that runs south from Tonstall Road, past Leather Close, St Marks Road, Barnard Road to end at Gaston Road.

The road name ‘Lammas’ comes from Lammas Day, as defined in Wikipedia:

Lammas Day (Anglo-Saxon hlaf-mas, “loaf-mass”), also known as Loaf Mass Day, is a Christian holiday celebrated on 1 August.

The road isn’t mentioned in the 1925 street directory, and part of it is shown on the 1932 map. Perhaps the houses were built from the end of the 1920s or 1930s.

The 1932 OS map shows the road as between Barnard Road and Gaston Road. The 1952 OS map shows the road in its extent as today.

1952 OS map

1932 OS map

1910 OS map. The footpath (F.P.), that runs to near the footbridge over the railway line, is now the boundary of the rear gardens on the east side of the road with the Laburnum housing estate.

News Articles
The newspaper articles below are via the British Newspaper Archive and are shown most recent first.

Norwood News – Friday 10 February 1961

Norwood News – Friday 10 February 1961
Image © Reach PLC. Image created courtesy of THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD.

A QUEEN ENTERS FOOTBALL CONTEST

FAIR-HAIRED Sandra Elkins (aged 17), Lammas Avenue, Mitcham, the 1960 Mitcham Carnival Queen, was among late entries for the Crystal Palace Football Queen competition.

Gretta Roadnight, Beulah Hill, Upper Norwood, and Penny Smith, Melrose Avenue, Mitcham, were other new competitors before the contest closed last week. This makes a total of 11 girls who will parade for the right to represent Palace in the area finals during a Supporters’ Club dance at Beckenham Baths tomorrow (Saturday). Judging will tale place at 9.30 p.m. by a panel of celebrities. This will include Kathleen Dale, President of the Surrey Women’s A.A.A. and a former Olympic hurdler; Cecil, her husband, president of Surrey A.A.A, and the Tooting and Mitcham F. C. P.T.I.; international boxer Tony Lewis, Streatham ice-hockey star Bob Ketcher and Ashley Deane, the Tooting model.

Sutton & Epsom Advertiser – Thursday 7th November 1957

PURSE PRESENTED BY MAY QUEEN.

A purse containing a cheque for £15 was handed to Lady Ismay for the Church of England Children’s Society by the May Queen of Mitcham on Monday. The May Queen, Grace Dadswell, of Lammas Avenue, went up to the Albert Hall for the ceremony, when many societies handed over money to the society’s fund for waifs and strays

Croydon Times – Saturday 12 August 1939

HAWKER TELLS P.C. HE IS “LIKE HITLER”

Constable Did Not Agree

“You are like Hitler” is what a Mitcham hawker was alleged to have said to a policeman who stopped him for being drunk in charge of a barrow.

At Croydon County Police Court, on Tuesday, the Clerk asked the constable: “You do not agree, do you, that you are like Hitler?”

“No sir,” – replied the officer.

The constable, Thomas Redfern said he saw the defendant, William George Norman (59), Marian-road, Mitcham, zig-zagging about Lammas-avenue, Mitcham, on Saturday night, with a barrow. After turning into another road, he fell to the ground. He was taken into custody, and at the police station a doctor was called at defendant’s request.

Norman told the Court he was sorry, and said such a thing would not happen again. He was fined 2s. 6d. and told to pay 7s. 6d. doctor’s fee.

Birmingham Mail – Thursday 4th May 1939

GAS EXPLOSION
THREE MEN BURNED IN SCHOOL MISHAP

Three men were burnt and a fourth gassed in an explosion at a new Surrey County Council school at Aragon Road, Morden, to-day. The four men, all employees of Wandsworth Gas Company, were connecting a three-inch main in a cellar meter room under the school. An electric light bulb burst and caused the explosion. Edward Roberts (aged 17), of Lammas Avenue, Mitcham, is in Sutton Hospital with burns to his face and arms. H. Driver and D. Morris were treated at St. Anthony’s Hospital, Cheam, for burns and then sent home. The fourth man, C. Weston, was given artificial respiration by ambulance men and also sent home. The gas supply was not connected, there was no fire and comparatively little damage was done to the building.

Shepton Mallet Journal – Friday 10th March 1939

TWO BABIES TOTAL 5 lb. 4 oz.

Two tiny babies, one a boy weighing 2 lb, 13 oz. and the other girl weighing 2 lb. 7 oz., have been born in the Longley Road Maternity Home, Tooting, London, S.W. Both babies are being kept in electrically heated cots and fed from a specially made miniature bottle. They are the smallest babies to have been born in the home, and their progress is stated to have been most satisfactory.

Mrs. Ella Seward, of Lammas Avenue, Mitcham, Surrey, mother of the boy, the wife of a window cleaner.

Mrs. Sani Coinage, of Woodbury Road, Tooting, mother of the girl, was formerly of Greek nationality. She met her husband, a non-commissioned officer in the Royal Sussex Regiment when he was stationed in Cyprus.

From the Sutton & Epsom Advertiser, Thursday 4th July, 1935.

COCKROACH PLAGUE.

SLIPPER AND FLAT-IRON ATTACK AT MITCHAM.

“Charge of the Night Brigade.”

Cockroaches an inch and a half long and as thick as a man’s finger have been making raids on houses in Lammas-avenue, Mitcham, every night for weeks past. Some are smaller, but size is not important; it is the thousands of the plague that matter.

The cockroaches assemble in the street after dusk enter the front gardens, soon run up the stucco fronts of the houses and do their best to enter. They also attack the houses from the rear. The nightly visitation has become such a menace that the residents have had to turn out with electric torches and swat the pests with slippers, flat-irons, mallets and anything else that would do the job with dispatch. It has been a messy and nasty business and the hunters are getting tired of the “sport”. Sometimes they don’t get to bed before two in the morning.

Mr. A. J. Martin, of 109, told the Advertiser “The cockroaches, for the most part, come from somewhere at the back of Lammas-avenue. But many hundreds come up through crevices in the street between the concrete roadway and the kerb. The drain heads are often crowded with them. No window can be left open and we are almost stifled by the heat. Bands of us twenty strong, attack the beastly things and they keep us busy for hours Mr. George Hoare, of 105 has had to protect the open windows at the top of his flat with wire screens, “If we open the front door at night the cockroaches are up the stairs in a jiffy.” he said. “I have had to line the door jambs to keep them out.” While the Advertiser man was talking to a neighbour. Mr. C. J. Shepherd, of 107, was burning a bucketful of the insects in his back garden.

COUNCILLORS ON THE SPOT.

On Thursday night Councillors Dalton and East visited the plague spot and saw for themselves that the householders had not exaggerated the nuisance “I have never seen anything like it.” Mr. Dalton told the Advertiser. The fronts of a number of the houses seemed to be black with cockroaches, and they were running over the pavement in all directions. We saw them popping up through the concrete too. I understand that the Medical Officer of Health and the Sanitary Department are taking every possible action to put an end to a nuisance that may also be a serious menace to health. Dr. Till and Mr. C. G. Rabbetts have paid several visits to Lammas-avenue when the cockroaches have been on the warpath, and on Saturday night they poured paraffin into the street crevices. But the plague will have to be attacked at the source. Meanwhile the Public Health Committee are considering the matter and the steps to be taken to stamp out the plague. The harassed householders see the humorous side as well. They call their nightly hunt “The charge of the Night Brigade.”

Late Night News.

Miss Violet Reed was bitten on the leg by a cockroach while standing at the garden gate of her home at the end of Lammas-avenue on Saturday night.

Maps are reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland, reuse CC-BY.