Tag Archives: River Wandle

1953 news items

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Thursday 16 July 1953

Where is the flag?
More than 40 years earlier the schools of Mitcham, England, and Mitcham, Australia, had exchanged national flags. On the Tuesday, Mr A. W. Bowdery of the local British Legion asked what had happened to the Australian flag when Mr Charles H. Honybun, from the Australian Mitcham, visited the branch; Mr Honybun said the flag sent from the British Mitcham was still used on A.N.Z.A.C. Day, and offered another if the Australian flag had been lost.

Thursday 20 August 1953

HOUSING THIRD BEST IN COUNTY
Figures beaten only by Croydon and Guildford
2,239 HOMES BUILT IN MITCHAM SINCE WAR
Since the war, 2,239 new houses and flats had been built in Mitcham. Up to the end of June the council had completed 1,384 permanent houses and flats and 345 temporary houses, private builders had put up 41 new houses, and 469 war-destroyed dwellings had been rebuilt, 411 of them by private builders. Only Croydon, with more than 3,000 new homes, and Guildford, with 1,411, had built more post-war dwellings in Surrey. Mitcham had 323 dwellings under construction and over 2,000 on tenders approved.

Friday 28 August 1953

TOM FRANCIS, THE MAN WHO WAS MITCHAM, DIES
Mr Thomas Francis, head of a Mitcham family of four generations, died at his daughter’s home at Warlingham on Saturday, aged 81. Born over his father’s shop in London Road, he lived in Mitcham for nearly 80 years until he retired in April 1951. He had been a member of the old Parish Council, a former chairman and a vice-president of the Mitcham Civic Society, a former president of the Chamber of Commerce, and a long-standing member of the Society of Friends. He remembered drives in broughams and wagonettes, one ending stuck in a pond in Morden Road and another through about a foot of water at Hackbridge, Quaker meetings at Mitcham Manor House, cycling with Alfred and Ernest Mizen, performing bears at Mitcham Fair, and the “Old Squirt,” the village fire engine kept in a cage on Lower Green where the Town Hall now stands. The London Road business that bears the Francis name was started by a Mr Fitt in 1830, taken over by his parents in 1870, and he joined it in 1886. His Quaker funeral at the Cricket Green Methodist Church on Tuesday was attended by the Mayor of Mitcham (Coun. E. E. Mount), Ald. and Mrs T. L. Ruff, Mr S. Chart (former town clerk), Dr A. H. Shelswell, Mr C. J. Farrell (divisional education officer), Mr H. J. Dorrett (Rotary Club), Mr Dick Gifford (chairman of the Civic Society), Messrs R. Culmer, J. Pillinger and F. Cole (Mitcham Cricket Club), Mr S. Taylor (Horticultural Society), Mr and Mrs A. H. Bailey, Mr W. Dalton, and representatives of the Society of Friends School at Saffron Walden. He left Mitcham Borough Libraries a collection of historical slides, largely from his own negatives from about 1890, with older wet-plate views of about 1865–70 by a photographer named Drummond and by John R. Chart. His first camera was a mahogany box with a rack-work lens of the sort once used by beach photographers. He played regularly for Upper Mitcham against Lower Mitcham and, after the Wednesday XI was revived in 1925, rarely missed a match; between the wars he and his son Tom both played. During the last war he was injured when his house was bombed and later had an eye removed. “He was Mitcham. He lived for Mitcham,” said Mr Stephen Taylor, an employee of many years. He served on the Wilson Hospital committee from its foundation until the hospital was taken over by the State, and part of his education was at Mitcham Lodge College, next to the London Road schools, where Dr William Smith was the principal.

Monday 2 November 1953

TREE HIT BY GALE KILLS WOMAN
Forty-five-year-old Olive Taylor was killed when gales and heavy rain hit southern England; she was found among the branches of a tree blown down near her home at Chartham, Canterbury. At Hastings, 78-year-old Mr William James Town, of Bulwark Street, Dover, was blown into a boating lake and taken to hospital suffering from shock. Roads were flooded in Hampshire, Dorset, Surrey, Sussex and London, and families were driven out of their homes in Phipps Bridge-road, Merton, Surrey, by the swollen River Wandle.

Notes on Mitcham Common by H.G. Winbow

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Published in the South Warder, the newsletter of the South Ward Residents Association in August 1962.

Recently the question arose about the origin of the footpath near the Garden Village from Cranmer Bridge to Mitcham Junction. This path is on the site of the old road and when the London and Portsmouth Railway was constructed across the Common in 1863, the present Cranmer Road was realigned, owing to the sharp curve made to approach the junction of the Wimbledon/West Croydon line which was constructed in 1844.

Recently cars appeared to be using this footpath as a short cut from Willow Lane to Cranmer Bridge, and it is satisfactory to note that the Conservators agreed to the Preservation Society’s request to erect posts here.

Walking round the Common, you notice several old cart tracks, one just the other side of the bridge at Mitcham Junction led to a farm near the railway, this is now known as Aspen Gardens. Further on we come to the concrete road, which is called Drakes Road but nobody seems to know how this road got its name, except that it was the entry to the gravel pits which were worked here for many years.

A short distance from here we see another rough track across the Common, this is called Arneys Lane. At one time this went across the fields to some old cottages near the River Wandle. This track now stops at the footpath which runs along the rear of the houses; the footpath is believed to be on the site of the Surrey Iron Railway branch to Hackbridge.

Not far from here is the “Goat Inn”. Beyond here this part of the Common is called Mill Green and is maintained by Beddington and Wallington Borough Council. But opposite this inn there is another track which follows the southern boundary of the Common. This track ends at the railway, but there is a footbridge here, so one can continue the walk on to Beddington Lane Halt. This is one of the best parts of the Common, right away from any roads.

Some years ago a small area was added, so one can now walk through the avenue of trees to the footpath to Beddington Lane, a very pleasant walk in the summer. From here there is no need to follow the road to the Windmill House, but walk across the Common past the one-island pond, and across the Croydon Road to Commonside East,

Proceeding westwards, we come to the new factory of Tower Creameries, this is on the site of the old workhouse which was built about 1790 and for many years was used by the Woodite Rubber Company’s works. Sections of the first Atlantic submarine cable was supposed to have been made here.

Just near here we see two old cart tracks crossing the recently reclaimed part of the Common, these were used as the entrance to Sherwood Farm.
Crossing Manor Road we come to the rough road which runs along the Common to Commonside East; many years ago some wooden cottages stood here, which might explain how this road came into existence.

Owing to building development on the boundary of the Common, these old cart tracks present a problem. As they are all on Common land the question of keeping them in repair is a difficult point.

Further along Commonside East there is a small pond, known as “Pinnocks Pond”. Years ago opposite here there was a small cottage and market gardens, owned by a Mr. Walsh and later by a Mr. Pinnock; this explains how the pond became known by this name. The road from here across the Common to the “Blue House”, now called Cedars Avenue, was called the New Road by the old inhabitants. The end of this road, of course, brings us to the roundabout and the old wooden cottages, shown on old maps as “The Blue Houses”. It has been said that employees of the Surrey Iron Railway stabled their horses here. This could be true because these cottages are not far from the site of the old iron road.

The old “Ravensbury Arms” was the same as these cottages, the present public house was built in 1906. But a shorter walk can be made by taking the footpath from Beddington Lane over the Common and following the railway, this brings us out via the Golf Club House to Carshalton Road.

This is a nice walk, but I would not advise this way in wet weather as this part of the Common is very rough, owing to the extensive gravel digging that took place here before the Common was controlled by the Conservators. Along this path is where the new footbridge over the West Croydon line has been erected by the Golf Club and which is open to the public.