Thames Tributary Falcon - Wandsworth Common

Thames Tributary Falcon
The Falcon and its tributaries flow north and west to the Thames
.

Post to the north Wandsworth Common
Post to the east Balham
Posr ro the west Earlsfield

Bellevue Road
2 Hope Tavern. Originally the Hope and Anchor of 1849.

Burntwood Lane
Playing Fields. Land to Broderick Road laid out by 1897 as a cricket field.
Birchlands Avenue
Falcon – the stream ran down here and met at tributary south of Nightingale Road.

Falcon brook
Thus was a tributary of the Thames now which is covered over. It was also called Hideborne that is 'stream running through the hide of land'.

Nightingale Lane
149 Church of Latter Day Saints. 1950s design, substantial and austere

Nottingham Road
5 listed bollards

Routh Road
3 home of David Lloyd George 1865-1945. He lived here 1904 – 1908 while he was President of the Board of Trade. Plaque installed 1992.

Rushholme Road
Falcon - From the meeting point of the tributaries the stream ran down what is now Rusholme Road


St.James Drive
This was once called Ouseley Road
St.James Westminster Industrial school. 5 acres of an enclosure of 20 acres of the common were enclosed in 1846 for the parish of St.James, Westminster. The school was built in 1852 and housed young people sent there by magistrates. In 1910 it was bought by Wandsworth and Clapham Guardians to be used as a workhouse infirmary.
St.James Hospital. The old school buildings were transferred to the London County Council from Wandsworth Board of Guardians. They were modernised from 1953 with a new Outpatients' Department, by Devereux & Davies and this continued through the 1950s and 1960s. Demolished 1988, the site is now housing.

Trinity Road
St.Mary Magdalen Church. The first church here in 1870 was a ‘tin tabernacle’ mission church. A second temporary structure in brick was opened in 1873. The current church was built in 1888.
Trinity Road chapel – evangelical Baptists
172 home of author Thomas Hardy with a blue plaque
226 Surrey Tavern. Mid Victorian and now an Italian restaurant. Built of the bricks used in the Craig Telescope tower. These bricks are of a different colour and that they were once part of the 64-foot tower which held the tube of the telescope.

Wandsworth Common
It was in ten sections and included lots of encroachments. It belonged to the Spencer family. Mrs. Cooper wife of Jack Cooper the fighting gipsy told fortunes live in a tent in the middle. There were 53 enclosures between 1794-1866 and it was crossed by various railways. Henry Peak the MP for Wandsworth helped set up a committee in 1870 which resulted in the Wandsworth Common Act 187l in which it was vested in Conservators while Spencer got a perpetual annuity from the rates. In 1887 it was transferred to the Metropolitan Board of Works who laid out paths created lakes from old gravel pits. 1898 it became the responsibility of the London County Council extended it by 20 acres who in 1912. In 1971 responsibility for the common transferred to Wandsworth Council.
The Scope. Nature conservation area on the site of the telescope. 50 types of tree including balsam poplar. Lots of planted trees. reed beds, willow, crack willow, birch and giant hogweed, purple moor grass, strawberry clover, comfrey, birch and robins. 20 sorts of grass.
Telescope - there is a slight depression in the ground where the tower once stood. The path from Lyford Road cuts right across it. Rev John Craig commissioned a big telescope 1852, 64' high and 85' foot. It was built by William Gravatt, one if Marc Brunel’s assistants. The telescope tube was built by Rennie and ran on a circular azimuth track way. Largest ever built then. Now wild.
Wandsworth Common Station. Built between Balham and Clapham Junction on Southern Rail. The line was opened by the West End and Crystal Palace Railway as a tourist line to the palace in 1856. Line to Victoria Pimlico Station 5.58. The station wad rebuilt in 1905 following quadrupling of the line.

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