The Richard Milward Prize for Local History First Prize 2014 New Wimbledon A story of suburban growth and metropolitan expansion by Kirk Bannister Kirk Bannister left with Professor Richard Tait centre and Chairman Asif Malik: photo Simon Joseph
New Wimbledon A story of suburban growth and metropolitan expansion By Kirk Bannister The growth of London in the 19 th century forever changed the villages that surrounded it. Wimbledon like many others was transformed by the huge boom in population during the Victorian period. The result of this was the march of bricks and mortar across the landscape of the Home Counties attended by many thousands of labourers and artisans. For Wimbledon this meant a change in locus and orientation. Wimbledon became over time a suburb of London and part of its urban landscape. The story of this transition was one of startling and rapid change. New Wimbledon, as it was termed at the time, developed in an incredibly short period between the 1860s and the 1890s, as the fields below the ancient village were transformed into a matrix of streets and houses. This study focuses on two housing estates and their development in this period. The area under study is neatly laid out in the 1891 Census (and can also be seen in the map below): Figure 1: Modern Wimbledon (Source: OpenStreetMap contributors 2 ) Today Wimbledon is part of a seamless mesh of roads and housing within London, but in 1848 it was essentially no more than a village surrounded by fields. The area under study was just that, essentially a collection of fields with the only habitation being the Grove House mansion and Holme Elms, neither of which survive in the present day. This is neatly illustrated by the 1848 tithe map for the area pictured below. All that part of Wimbledon commencing with No. 1 the Broadway continuing along the right hand side of such Broadway and Merton Road to its Junction with Kingston Road and the north side of such to Hartfield Road and along the east side of thereof to its Terminator at the Prince of Wales Hotel including all the roads alleys and dwellings within this area. 1 1 The National Archives (NRA), RG 12, Census Enumerators Books 1891 for Wimbledon ure 2: Tithe Map (Source: Merton Heritage & Local Studies) 2 This image is licenced as CC BY-SA & Open Database Licence: https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright Fig
The land was a mix of arable and meadows. Caroline Phillips, a wealthy widow, owned a large portion of the land in this area; much of the rest of it was owned by Richard Thornton who was at one point the richest man in Britain, having made his fortune in the Baltic 3. Francis Meech and Sir James Parke were the other land owners. The exact demarcation of ownership is illustrated below. Figure 3: Land Owners in 1848 (Source: Merton Heritage & Local Studies) Wimbledon in this early period. Indeed house building in this area did not occur in any great volume until the 1860s. As Richard Rodger puts it: Passenger networks required passengers to generate adequate revenue to operate consequently they followed rather than preceded residential development 5 and in truth for operators like LSW carrying passengers was more of an unprofitable afterthought than primary concern. The coming of the railway was not the key to the transformation of this area, at least not in the early stages of development. There was a far more important factor, one that is a basic necessity for life: the availability of clean water. Although there had been some housing built on the land in this area, any large scale construction of housing was not viable without access to clean water. The arrival of this essential resource was a by-product of the huge public pressure to supply unpolluted water to other areas of London, in this case Brixton. How and why did this land suddenly become a profitable place to put up new housing? There was obviously a need for new housing due to the increase in population but that alone does not explain why this area in particular saw such rapid changes. There are a number of important factors that led to this transformation. It is often assumed that railways were the a principal force in the growth of suburbia and in 1912 the Victoria County History entry for Wimbledon states: The main line of the London and South-Western railway [LSW], which connects the parish with London, was opened in 1838, and since that time Wimbledon has grown into a very favourable and accessible suburb. 4 But this is certainly not the case for New 3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/richard_thornton 4 VCH, http://www.britishhistory.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=43040 Figure 4: Monster Soup 1828 (Source: Science Museum / Science and Society Picture Library) The principal companies involved in building a new water line through this area were the Lambeth Water Company and the Southwark and Vauxhall Water Company. By the 1820s the public concern over clean water was growing due to the potential for 5 R. Rodger, Housing in Urban Britain 1780 1914 (Macmillan, 1989) p 39-40
outbreaks of waterborne diseases and this is illustrated in Figure 4. The Cholera outbreaks in 1831 and 1832 also added to the general public concern over disease in London. In 1851 four 30- inch pipes were laid through Wimbledon and it was this that ultimately made house building in the area a viable endeavour 6. The supply of clean water to the area made it both viable and attractive to build housing and this probably played a large part in the decisions of the owners to sell their land for development. At this point the growth of a new Victorian institution enters into the equation. The development of Freehold Land Societies was crucial in the transformation of New Wimbledon; these entities were essentially founded as political vehicles, a means by which political parties could increase voting enfranchisement 7. By 1854 there were over 60 Freehold Land Societies in operation and they became the biggest force behind the housing boom in the 1860 s. Although essentially conceived as political vehicles they quickly became companies whose function, according to Michael Jahn, appears to become less the promotion of working-class home ownership than the preparation of sites and the provision of finance for speculative building 8. There is little evidence for the first major change in land ownership in the area, except, that at some point between 1848 and 1852 Richard Thornton had sold off plots 220 to 223 on the tithe map to The National Freehold Land Allotment Society, which was funded by two clergymen. The National Freehold Land Allotment Society was based in St John s Street, Adelphi, London but no record of its business transactions seems to have survived. However, a plan of the roads and freehold plots has survived 9. The estate was divided into 309 plots of land that were to be sold to individual to members for speculation, or sold in bulk at up to 5 lots per member. The estate was set up by Revd Thomas Pelham Dale of Sion College and Revd Henry Hutton of St. Paul s 10. It is likely that buying up this kind of land was a lucrative way to make money for the church. Once the land was purchased roads were laid out and plots divided. Indeed, one of the roads, Pelham Road, was likely to have been named after Thomas Pelham Dale. As one can see from Figure 5, the plots were laid out along four roads, the width of the plots varying from 25 feet upwards. The owners put into place very restrictive regulations governing the formation of housing on the estate and it was these regulations that inevitably shaped the physical landscape of the area. Several key points in the regulations are worth considering. The most important is to do with the value of the property. The fixing of the value of properties built on the estate meant that the quality and design would reflect the kind of housing stock middle class and lower middle class buyers would come to expect. This was reinforced by another stipulation only allowing for the construction of detached or semi-detached villas. As can be seen from Figure 5, very few conveyances for the individual plots still survive. 6 The Times, Friday, Nov 25, 1853; p 5; Issue 21595; col E 7 H.J. Dyos, Victorian Suburb: A study of growth in Camberwell (Leicester, 1973) p 114-115 8 Suburban development in outer west London, 1850-1900 in The Rise of Suburbia, ed. F.M.L Thompson (Leicester, 1982) p 103 9 Surrey Local History Centre, 4171-1, Land in Wimbledon, Surrey of the Church of England and National Freehold Land Allotment Society (NFLAS) 10 Surrey Local History Centre, 4171-3, First Schedule of Land in Wimbledon owned by Church of England and NFLAS.
Figure 5: Church of England Estate 1853 (Source: Surrey History Centre)
Figure 6: 1867 OS Map (Source: Merton Heritage & Local Studies / Ordnance Survey 11 ) 11 Reproduced from 1867 Ordnance Survey map with the kind permission of the Ordnance Survey
Figure 7: 1892 OS Map (Source: Merton Heritage & Local Studies / Ordnance Survey 12 ) 12 Reproduced from 1892 Ordnance Survey map with the kind permission of the Ordnance Survey
Figure 8: Houses of the BLC Estate (Source: Author)
Class Estate 1871 No. 1871 % 1891 No. 1891 % Estate 1871 No. 1871 % 1891 No. 1891 % British Land Co. Church of England Professional/Land Owners 16 6.53 17 2.921 5 15.625 30 11.071 Managerial/Employers 32 13.061 46 7.904 9 28.125 37 13.653 Clerical/Retail 35 14.286 68 11.684 5 15.625 54 19.926 Artisans/Skilled 121 49.388 339 58.247 13 40.625 97 35.793 Semi-Skilled 18 7.347 58 9.966 0 0 35 12.915 Unskilled/Manual 17 6.939 45 7.732 0 0 16 5.904 Unemployed 6 2.449 9 1.546 0 0 2 0.738 Total 245 100 582 100 32 100 271 100 Table 1: Tabulation of Class for heads of household 1871-1891 (Source: Census Enumerators Books) Origin 1851 No. 1851 % 1871 No. 1871 % 1891 No. 1891 % Wimbledon 1 3 274 15 1435 27 Surrey 7 22 276 16 972 18 London 7 22 428 24 1118 21 Other 17 53 798 45 1812 34 Total 32 100 1776 100 5337 100 Table 2: Tabulation of Birth Place 1851, 1871, 1891 (Source: Census Enumerators Books)
The National Freehold Land Allotment Society was not the only group to see a potential for profit in the area. One of the UK s most prolific land societies, The British Land Company, also capitalised on this opportunity and bought up much of the remaining land for the sum of 8,036 13. However unlike The National Freehold Land Allotment Society they were far less concerned with attempting to shape the social standing of their new housing estate. The British Land Company set the value of the properties to be constructed on their estate at a lower value of around 150 to 200. The decisions made by these two respective companies resulted in an obvious contrast between the two estates, which can be seen most markedly on the 1892 Ordnance Survey map with the British Land Company estate characterised by far denser house construction than its counterpart. Although the land was bought in the 1850s construction upon it did not occur until sometime later. In fact both companies had considerable difficulty in selling the plots, resulting in them being auctioned off, evidence of which can be seen in advertisements in The Builder. As the Ordnance Survey map of 1867 shows there was actually very little construction completed in the area up to that point. The majority of construction happened between 1867 and 1892. As Michael Jahn points out, there was a prolific building boom across the capital in this period and this would seem to be supported by the evidence in New Wimbledon which shows very little construction until the late 1860s 14. Despite the stipulations that had been designed to shape the social climate of the area and in contrast to the idea that the 13 Wimbledon Museum, Box C A4.2.34, Conveyance 14 M. Jahn, Suburban development in outer west London, 1850-1900 in The Rise of Suburbia, ed. F.M.L Thompson (Leicester, 1982) p 103 suburbs of South London were all grey uniform areas of middle-class domesticity, the reality is that places like New Wimbledon are not so easily categorised. Indeed many of the early residents would not have looked out of their windows to see rows upon rows of neat middle-class houses but rather a mess of muddied roads, construction materials and open sewers. It was not until the 1880s with the greater role of the Corporation of Wimbledon in the buying out of private roads, making up sewers and the lighting, that any sense of order would be imposed. The people that lived in New Wimbledon also defy the stereotype of the Victorian suburb. In the Census records all manner of people and occupations can be found. In many cases the original intention of the land societies was subverted: instead of neat middle-class family units occupying a single house, we often find multiple families of lower middle-class and working class people living together in one property. The majority of people who came to live in the new estates were from London or the Home Counties. However there are also a number of families who came from across the UK and during the most intensive period of construction we find many of the houses occupied by builders and labourers whose children were born in many different places. The social structure of the two estates can also be seen in the occupations of the heads of household listed in the Census documentation. Through the use of Armstrong s classification system 15 the social classes of the people that lived in this area of New Wimbledon can be seen. Though it is by no means a perfect method, as it is based on a later classification of class, it does however 15 W.A. Armstrong, The use of information about occupation in Nineteenth-century society, ed. E.A. Wrigley (Cambridge University Press 1972)
give an excellent indication of the area s social makeup. As Table 1 shows, the majority of people living in this area of New Wimbledon were mainly engaged in skilled manual work and much of this was centred on the building trade, which indicates that many of those involved in building the houses were also living in them. Unlike areas such as Surbiton, this part of New Wimbledon was not characterised by indicators of middle-class living such as a high volume of female domestic servants. There was a prevalence of multiple-occupancy and a habit of taking on boarders and lodgers which shows that many families could not afford to live in the properties based on their income alone. As can be seen from the table, this part of New Wimbledon was not a homogenous middle-class suburb but had instead a vibrant mix of people from all classes. This area of New Wimbledon reflects in many ways what was going on across the entire capital at this time: railways, water and house construction fuelled by the pressures of a booming population. In New Wimbledon it is clear that the crucial factor was clean water. However even with this supplied it was not until the building boom of the 1860 s that house construction really took off in this area. Despite many Victorian commentators describing this growth through the narrative of bland middle-class suburbs 16 this study illustrates that areas like New Wimbledon were far from onedimensional. They were often chaotic incomplete landscapes filled with people from different places and different classes 16 Writers like George Gissing and Mrs. Beeton shaped this contemporary view of a homogenous middle class suburbia, for a fuller deconstruction of these themes refer to Lara Whelan s Unburying Bits of Rubbish: Deconstruction of the Victorian Suburban Ideal http://homepages.gold.ac.uk/londonjournal/september2003/whelan.html living together then, much as we in Wimbledon live now. Sources Ordinance Survey Maps, Tithe Maps, OpenStreetMap.org, Census Enumerators Books, Conveyances, Documentation of the National Freehold Land Allotment Society, Victoria County History, The Times Newspaper, Wikipedia, Science Museum/Science and Society Picture Library, Merton Heritage & Local Studies Centre, Surrey History Centre, authors photographs. Bibliography H.J. Dyos Victorian Suburb: a study of the growth of Camberwell (Leicester 1973) R. Rodger Housing in Urban Britain 1780 1914 (Macmillan 1989) F.M.L Thompson ed. The Rise of Suburbia (Leicester 1982) E.A. Wrigley ed. Nineteenth-century society (Cambridge 1972) Acknowledgements The author and the Wimbledon Society are grateful to the Merton Heritage & Local Studies Centre, Science Museum and Surrey Local History Centre for granting permission to use their assets. The author would also like to thank Roehampton University for its resources and the help and advice given during the original research by Professor Peter Edwards and others. PRINT PRINT COMPANY 1946 DESIGN DISPLAY 257-261 Haydons Road l Wimbledon l London l SW19 8TY 020 8540 5959 l www.thewimbledonprintcompany.co.uk l @wimbledonprint