Commonside East | Mitcham History Notes

Mitcham Advertiser – Thursday 17 January 1957
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Mitcham Advertiser – Thursday 17 January 1957

Young fox caught in Mitcham

SENIOR INSPECTOR J. KEECH, of the R.S.P.C.A., was faced with a new problem on Thursday: How to deal with a young fox which had been found in the garden of a house in Commonside East, Mitcham.

Early on Thursday morning, Mr. and Mrs. P. W. Valentine heard noises in their garden. When it was light, they went out and found that two of their chickens had been killed and another badly hurt. And lying among some bushes they found a fox.

They called Inspector Keech, who succeeded in lassoing the animal, “I have been in the Tooting and Mitcham area for more than eight years, but this was the first time I had had to deal with a fox,” he said.

Having caught the fox, the next problem was what to do with it. There was only one answer — he took it home to his house in Hill Road, Mitcham. And there it stayed until Tuesday, when it was taken by Inspector Keech to the R.S.P.C.A.’s home at Willesden. From there it will be sent either to a wild life sanctuary, or to someone who can give it a home.

Inspector Keech suspects that the fox, which was about a year old, may have been someone’s pet, Mitcham Common is a considerable distance from a spot where wild foxes may be found, and he discovered that he was able to handle it fairly easily—but he took the precaution of wearing strong leather gauntlets.

He had one inquiry from someone who had lost a fox and thought the one caught at Mitcham might be his. “ But, as he lived in Rugby, I had to tell him it was most un- likely.” said Inspector Keech.

An old name for Arthur’s Pond, that’s at the corner of Commonside East and Watney’s Road on Mitcham Common, was The Oako.

1953 OS map reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland, reuse CC-BY (NLS)

Other nearby residents have referred to the Pond as Watney’s Pond.

It is possible that Eric Montague started using the name Arthur’s Pond when he researched the history of James Arthur’s New Barns Farm.

In her article ‘A Thirties Childhood in Mitcham’, Irene Bain said:

Summer was a time for picking buttercups, which grew in profusion on the edge of the Common.

“Let’s see if you like butter”, we would say to each other, holding a buttercup beneath chins, where the golden glow always assured an answer of, “Yes!”

We made daisy chains. We climbed trees and played around the Old Oako pond, which was on the opposite side of Watneys Road, the name handed down from generation to generation by children.

It has been suggested by Richard B., another nearby resident, that Old Oako referred to the oak tree, and the pond was just called the Oako.

Her article can be downloaded for free from Merton Historical Society Local History Notes 19.

Mitcham History Notes

Some notes about history of Mitcham, Surrey

Tag Archives: Commonside East

When foxes were rare in Mitcham – in 1957

The Oako