Added

IN PROGRESS — NOT FOR PUBLICATION

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Wandsworth's Sporting Quarter

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Ordnance Survey map from 1916 showing the numerous private sports grounds spread across much of the south-west of the Common. Most were devoted to cricket, football, tennis, and bowls.

I have tinted areas that are marked on the map as sports grounds, but also some that had recently closed (for example the "Loxley Ground" that lay between Lyford and Ellerton Roads), or would appear within the next few years, such as Magdalen Park Lawn Tennis Club and Bowls Club.

However I have not included courts or pitches in private gardens and attached fields, though they must have existed: newspaper articles report matches in the grounds of several of the larger houses.

"The Grange Tennis Club" (which I knew as a child in the 1950s as "The Romany") closed some years ago. Its former ground is still there, hiding behind the houses on Lyford Road, though the former courts are now pleasant lawns.

The Heathfield Club (which at this time owned what is now called "Trinity Fields") was forced to leave in 1924. It ceased to be a cricket club in that year but moved its tennis courts and bowling green across Burntwood Lane to a new site next to Collamore in 1924. Only the bowling green remains today, the courts having been covered in houses (in the 1980s?).

However, the Magdalen Park Lawn Tennis Club (Magdalen Road) is still intact. Founded in ?1914, it continues to thrive.

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