The stories in the Chronicles, grouped by subject. A story can appear under more than one heading. Within each subject, the most recent issues come first.
Work in progress: issues are being added in batches, so some recent stories are not here yet. The list of all the Chronicles is complete.
Wandsworth Common Itself: Geography, Ecology, Boundaries
Land added to the Common in exchange for Trinity Road: Prison Banks, old Marcilly Road, land by the Patriotic Building, Heathfield Gardens – June 2026Prison Banks now rich in wildflowers (Roy Vickery walk, 2023)
Trinity Road: Highway History & Bridge Approaches – May 2026
Trinity Road: Highway History & Bridge Approaches – April 2026
Wandsworth Bridge: From 1873 Iron to 1937–40 Concrete – April 2026
Commons Preservation: 1860s–1870s Fence-Breaking & Samuel Sullings – April 2025
Philip Boys’s Lone Star rifle smashed by bullies on "Bushy Common" (the Scope) on Christmas Day, mid-1950s – March 2025, part 2
Samuel Sullings, jailed for breaking down fences on the Common, entertained at St Mark’s Infants School, with John Buckmaster in the chair – March 2025, part 2South London Chronicle, 23 July 1870
Cricket Field / Extension: WWI LGH Occupation & Post-War Restoration – October 2024
The LCC buys the land rented to the Neal family; work starts on the cricket field, bowling green, tennis courts and cafe – May 2024
Wandsworth Council’s Recreation Committee proposes radical development of the Common, including an Olympic-standard athletics track – May 2024Defeated: 81.5% of users in a Wandsworth Society survey wanted the Common unchanged (Shirley Passmore)
Footballers need shower-baths, not horse troughs: washing facilities at Wandsworth Common condemned – September 2023, part 2Kensington Post
Bedfordshire Mercury fears Wandsworth Common will be built over; residents petition Earl Spencer – September 2023, part 2
South Western Star on the LCC’s whitewashed football pitch lines improving on Euclid – September 2023, part 2
Proposed Metropolitan Board of Works bye-laws for the Common (no carpet-beating, fishing, music, games or speeches without consent) – September 2023, part 2
Rus in Urbe protests at straight, rutted paths and the threat to the Black Sea – September 2023, part 2
T. W. Cole defends the LCC’s provision for games on the Common – September 2023, part 218 football pitches, 24 tennis courts, putting and bowling greens
Extraordinary Wandsworth Women (Amberley, 2026): Philip’s list of the 80+ women, by area – August 2026Also Jeanne Rathbone’s Inspirational Women of Battersea
Mrs Basil Holmes (Isabella Holmes) visits Mount Nod and the Quaker burial ground for The London Burial Grounds (1896) – July 2026
Unitarian Church, East Hill (corner of Elmsleigh Road), demolished for the road; Edward Thomas’s boyhood memories of it – June 2026Minister W.G. Tarrant introduced Thomas to James Ashcroft Noble
Thomas Hardy: "The Larches" (172 Trinity Road, 1878–1881) – May 2026
Thomas Gray: "Ode on the Pleasure Arising from Vicissitude" (1754) – May 2026
Edward Thomas & Helen (Noble) Thomas: First Kiss on Common (spring 1897) – March 2026
D.H. Lawrence: Great Friend of the Thomases – March 2026
Dante Alighieri: Paolo & Francesca (Inferno, Circle 2) – March 2026
Jane Austen: Routes Through/Past Common (250th Birthday, Dec 1775) – December 2025, part 1
Thomas Hardy: "The Larches" (172 Trinity Road, 1878–1881) – July 2025, part 2
Edward Thomas born – March 2025, part 2His memories of "Red Indian" battles on the Common and Bolingbroke Grove in the 1880s
Edward Thomas’s childhood games of Sioux and Mohicans; Board-school boys versus the grammar school – March 2025, part 2From his memoir The Childhood of Edward Thomas
Tottie (Edith Olga) Armour, Edward Thomas’s schoolfriend, in the 1881 census on Wakehurst Road – March 2025, part 2Philip Boys suggests she personified Cora of The Last of the Mohicans for Thomas
Baden-Powell writes Scouting for Boys at the Manor House by the Windmill, Wimbledon Common – March 2025, part 2Inspired partly by Ernest Thompson Seton’s Woodcraft Indians
J. P. Ede on bird sanctuaries invaded: moorhen chicks on the islands; recalls Edward Thomas bird-nesting – March 2024, part 1
Charles Ferdinand Porden sketches the "Parsonage or Manor House" beside Mount Nod – October 2026Museum of London; Dorian Gerhold identifies the 17th-century house
Hedley Fitton’s drawing of Mount Nod in the Daily Chronicle shows the Vanderhoven–Grolleau stone still legible – October 2026
The Graphic publishes "Old Huguenot Cemetery, Mount Nod, Wandsworth" – August 2026
Women in shared graves: the Etchingham–Oxenbridge brass (c.1480) and the Ladies of Llangollen – August 2026Comparisons for the Mount Nod pair
Simon Wilson: Tate Curator & Essays on Rodin’s Kiss – April 2026
Rodin’s "The Kiss" (Tate): Commissioned by Edward Perry Warren – March 2026
Edward Perry Warren (EPW): Philip’s Father’s Godfather & Collector – March 2026
John Henry Dearle: Lyford Road ("Red Thorn") & Morris & Co Tapestries – March 2026
St Mary Magdalene Cope shown with Fine Cell Work quilts made in Wandsworth Prison (Prisons Week) – October 2025, part 2
Zeppelin shot down, seen from the 3rd London General Hospital; painted by Sgt A. H. (Harry) Fullwood – September 2023, part 2One of London’s 19 anti-aircraft guns was on Wandsworth Common
Harry Fullwood’s balloon view of the 3rd London General Hospital – September 2023, part 2Video with Colonel Bogey
Extraordinary Wandsworth Women (Amberley, 2026): Philip’s list of the 80+ women, by area – August 2026Also Jeanne Rathbone’s Inspirational Women of Battersea
Other local women worth knowing: L.S. Bevington, Angela Carter, Irene Caudwell, Shirley Passmore, Sophia Sheppard, Gladys Turquet-Milnes and more – August 2026
Stephen Midlane presented with a farewell plaque at the Friends of Wandsworth Common party – July 2026Stephen and Doris move to Bristol; list of his Chronicles appearances
Betterton family moved from 26 West Side to Morville House, Fitzhugh Estate, for the road works – June 2026Hugh Betterton’s recollections
Janet Paul (née Betterton) dies – June 2026Photographed aged 14 months at 26 West Side, 1933
Memories of Trinity Road before and after the extension: Hugh Betterton, Graham Jackson, Fred Pearce – June 2026
Edward James Boys: Philip’s Father (Christened by Edward Perry Warren, 2 Jan 1917) – March 2026
Helen (Noble) Thomas: Author & Spouse of Edward Thomas – March 2026
Edward Thomas: Poet & Writer (c.1897 relationship with Helen on Common) – March 2026
John Crossland: Videographer (Friends Talks, YouTube, Bevington Album) – February 2026
Alfred George Hacker, on active service, sends a postcard of a French Zouave boy to his son Ken at 20 Gorst Road – October 2025, part 1Sarah Vey later researched the Hacker family
Obituary of Alfred George Hacker (bowls and cinema) in the Norwood News – October 2025, part 1Buried in Wandsworth Cemetery after a service at St Michael’s
Stephen Midlane: Local Historian, Heritage Group Chair, Friends of WC – September 2025, part 1
J. P. Ede’s letter "Tomahawks and Blood" in the South Western Star: boys playing Red Indians on the Common – March 2025, part 2
Tottie (Edith Olga) Armour, Edward Thomas’s schoolfriend, in the 1881 census on Wakehurst Road – March 2025, part 2Philip Boys suggests she personified Cora of The Last of the Mohicans for Thomas
Philip Boys: Author, Historian & Childhood Memories (1950s–60s) – April 2024
J. P. Ede’s first letter to the South Western Star: woken by a cuckoo at 39 Broomwood Road – March 2024, part 1Weekly nature letters about the Common through 1949
Schoolgirl Holly Leggett of 40 West Side has a begging costermonger arrested – September 2023, part 2
Kalulu, "Stanley’s boy", leaves Halbrake House School to return to Africa with H. M. Stanley – September 2023, part 2Halbrake School sports
Death of Dr John Tod Thyne, GP of 101 Earlsfield Road – September 2023, part 2Buried in Wandsworth Cemetery, Magdalen Road
Daily News letter claims Huguenot bones disturbed in building the new Catholic church – October 2026
Jas. A. Rochford’s reply in the Daily News: no bones disturbed – October 2026
Countess of Loudoun defends Emanuel by name in the House of Lords direct-grant debate – September 2026"Last week Emanuel beat Eton" in the Head of the River race
Old Emanuel CC beat Wimbledon CC at Blagdon’s on the day Wimbledon FC won the FA Cup – September 2026
Old Emanuel CC plays its last match at Blagdon’s after 95 years – September 2026Extract from Graham Jackson’s The Life and Times of London Cricket
Thomas Hardy’s May 1881 Walk on Common (After 6-Month Illness) – May 2026
Leo the lion escapes from a Southern Railway wagon at Clapham Junction and is recaptured – October 2025, part 1Movietone film and Imperial War Museum footage
Paul McCartney films the video for "Waterfalls" on a set on Wandsworth Common, with Olaf the polar bear – June 2025, part 2Where on the Common? Readers’ memories wanted
Hot-air balloon of Douglas, the Lurpak butter character, stolen from Wandsworth Common in its trailer – June 2025, part 2
Scaffolder Simon Fovargue finds the stolen Lurpak balloon (Shropshire Star) – June 2025, part 2
MI5’s London Reception Centre for wartime refugees opens at the Royal Victoria Patriotic Building – June 2025, part 2
Samuel Sullings, jailed for breaking down fences on the Common, entertained at St Mark’s Infants School, with John Buckmaster in the chair – March 2025, part 2South London Chronicle, 23 July 1870
London Reception Centre interrogates refugees at the Patriotic Building (January 1941 to May 1945) – May 2024
Spencer Park School boys stage a Son et Lumière at the Patriotic Building, with Sybil Thorndike as the voice of Queen Victoria – May 2024
Zeppelin shot down, seen from the 3rd London General Hospital; painted by Sgt A. H. (Harry) Fullwood – September 2023, part 2One of London’s 19 anti-aircraft guns was on Wandsworth Common
First Zeppelin raid on London as seen by Matron Edith Holden and nursing staff at the 3rd London General Hospital – September 2023, part 2The Gazette, April 1916
First major raid of the London Blitz – September 2023, part 2LCC bomb damage maps; V-1s from June 1944, V-2s from September 1944
Bedfordshire Mercury fears Wandsworth Common will be built over; residents petition Earl Spencer – September 2023, part 2
Charles Baldwin, young parachutist who jumped from the printworks chimney by the Common – September 2023, part 2Brother of Richard Judd-Green
Fight at the Freemason’s Tavern (now the Roundhouse), clubhouse of the Wandsworth Cricket Club – September 2023, part 2
Schoolgirl Holly Leggett of 40 West Side has a begging costermonger arrested – September 2023, part 2
Charles Nicholls, wearing an old LCC badge, charged with blackmailing a couple on the Common – September 2023, part 2Sentenced to 18 months, October 1906
Porden’s lost house: first recorded 1718 (John Bindon), "a genteel red brick house" 1793, gone soon after 1894 – October 2026Later home of the Salesian priests and their school
St Matthew’s, Brixton (C.F. Porden) and St Anne’s, Wandsworth (Smirke): "Waterloo" churches compared – October 2026
St Mary Magdalene RC church, East Hill (1905–06), and its 1920s Presbytery, 96 North Side – October 2026Salesian parish founded 1902
Emanuel School takes its last intake of boys on free places – September 2026Philip was a free-place boy from 1960
Philip starts at Emanuel School on a free place from Earlsfield School – September 2026
Countess of Loudoun defends Emanuel by name in the House of Lords direct-grant debate – September 2026"Last week Emanuel beat Eton" in the Head of the River race
Emanuel governors decide to go independent rather than become an ILEA comprehensive – September 2026
First fee-paying boys arrive at Emanuel – September 2026
Anne Sackville, Lady Dacre, makes the will that founds Emanuel Hospital (ten poor boys and ten girls) – September 2026Dacre monument in Chelsea Old Church; kneeling figures in Westminster Abbey
Emanuel goes co-educational: first girls in Year 7 – September 2026A return to Lady Dacre’s intention; girls had gone to Grey Coat Hospital in 1873
Emanuel School moves to Wandsworth Common, taking over the Royal Victoria Patriotic School for Boys – September 2026
Clapham County School for Girls merged with Marianne Thornton School to form Walsingham School – September 2026Head Miss Viner resigned; Walsingham closed 1993; Quondam plaque 1997
Thomas’s Clapham takes over the former Clapham County School buildings, Broomwood Road – September 2026Also Battersea Grammar (1994) and Hearnville School
What became of the local grammar schools: Putney High, Streatham & Clapham High, Alleyn’s, Dulwich, JAGS – September 2026Direct-grant schools that went independent
Graham Jackson’s letter: Sir Walter St John’s Trust, its windfall, and ownership of Trinity Fields – September 2026Trust wound up 1992; Trinity Fields Trust lease 1996, renewed 2017
Old Emanuel CC plays its last match at Blagdon’s after 95 years – September 2026Extract from Graham Jackson’s The Life and Times of London Cricket
The French Horn & Half Moon, 37 East Hill: pub, coroner’s court and auction house, demolished for the road – June 2026Rebuilt once before c.1900 for Woodwell Street; licensee Bill Kennedy
Unitarian Church, East Hill (corner of Elmsleigh Road), demolished for the road; Edward Thomas’s boyhood memories of it – June 2026Minister W.G. Tarrant introduced Thomas to James Ashcroft Noble
East Hill Estate (1926–28, on the site of the Fishmongers’ Almshouses), demolished by 1981 – June 2026
Bellevue Road: High Street Evolution (160 Years) – May 2026
NatureScope/Naturescope: 2026 Talks Venue – January 2026
The Royal Victoria Patriotic Asylum for Boys receives its first orphans – October 2025, part 2Based on Bernard Slater’s Portcullis articles (1872-1882)
The Royal Patriotic Fund buys 52 acres of "waste land" from Earl Spencer for £3,700 – October 2025, part 2The "kite" on which both asylums were built
Queen Victoria lays the first stone of the Patriotic Asylum for Girls – October 2025, part 2
The Patriotic Asylum for Girls completed (except the infirmary) – October 2025, part 2
Fernside, near Balham station, advertised for sale in The Times; considered for the boys’ asylum – October 2025, part 2
Royal Commissioners meet at Westminster and agree to build the boys’ school on the girls’ land at Wandsworth – October 2025, part 2
J. T. Chappell contracts to build the boys’ asylum to Henry Saxon Snell’s design – October 2025, part 2Snell later famous for hospitals
Royal Commissioners’ Eleventh Report: the boys’ asylum nearly ready – October 2025, part 2
Local Government Board inspector reports on both asylums after an epidemic among the girls – October 2025, part 2Dr Muter blamed sewage farming and the boys’ school well
Dr Francis Anstie dies of septicaemia after an autopsy at the girls’ asylum – October 2025, part 2
SS Schiller wrecked off the Scillies; next morning’s Times report used to test the boys’ reading – October 2025, part 2
The Patriotic Asylum for Boys advertised for sale; Emanuel School takes over the next year – October 2025, part 2
The spire of the Emanuel School (former boys’ asylum) tower removed as unsafe – October 2025, part 2Not toppled by a wartime bomb, as sometimes claimed
MI5’s London Reception Centre for wartime refugees opens at the Royal Victoria Patriotic Building – June 2025, part 2
The Last of the Mohicans showing at the Granada Wandsworth Road and the Grand Clapham Junction – March 2025, part 2
The Granada cinema, Clapham Junction, opens – March 2025, part 2Built on the site of Battersea Grammar School
The Century cinema, 15 Northcote Road (Bolingbroke Assembly Hall 1880, Globe 1930, Century 1951) closes – March 2025, part 2Later Tesco, KwikSave, Somerfield, Co-op
St Mark’s (originally St Mary’s) Infants School, Battersea Rise, built on the Common – March 2025, part 2Philip Boys’s candidate for a blue plaque
3rd London General Hospital (RVPA): WWI Extension Occupation – October 2024
Wandsworth Training College, an emergency teacher-training college for demobbed servicemen, at the Royal Victoria Patriotic Building – May 2024Group photograph 1949-50; recollections of emergency-trained teachers by Cathy Rowntree and Hugh Betterton
London Reception Centre interrogates refugees at the Patriotic Building (January 1941 to May 1945) – May 2024
The LCC buys the land rented to the Neal family; work starts on the cricket field, bowling green, tennis courts and cafe – May 2024
Honeywell Secondary School, a mixed school, in the Patriotic Building (c.1951-1957/8) – May 2024Photographs from Cathy Rowntree’s archive
Spencer Park School for boys opens beside the Patriotic Building – May 2024
Honeywell girls leave the Patriotic for the new Garratt Green School, Burntwood Lane – May 2024
Spencer Park School moves out of the unsafe Patriotic Building – May 2024
Spencer Park and Wandsworth Boys’ schools merge as John Archer School – May 2024
John Archer School closes and is demolished; housing estate, bridge and John Archer Way follow – May 2024
Philip Boys’s talk "Stories from the Surrey Pauper Lunatic Asylum, Burntwood Lane", Wandsworth Heritage Festival – May 2024Asylum opened 1841; later Springfield Hospital
The Surrey Pauper Lunatic Asylum, Burntwood Lane (later Springfield Hospital), opens – May 2024
First Zeppelin raid on London as seen by Matron Edith Holden and nursing staff at the 3rd London General Hospital – September 2023, part 2The Gazette, April 1916
Harry Fullwood’s balloon view of the 3rd London General Hospital – September 2023, part 2Video with Colonel Bogey
Topography & Place Names: Roads, Boundaries, Lost Geography
Charles Ferdinand Porden sketches the "Parsonage or Manor House" beside Mount Nod – October 2026Museum of London; Dorian Gerhold identifies the 17th-century house
Porden’s lost house: first recorded 1718 (John Bindon), "a genteel red brick house" 1793, gone soon after 1894 – October 2026Later home of the Salesian priests and their school
Fitzhugh Estate block names (Morville, St Quentin, Gernigan, Skipsea, Woodhall) come from the Dacre arms and manors – September 2026
Judith Grolleau of Knightsbridge makes her will: earliest known legal use of the name "Mount Nod" – August 2026Leaves Mrs Vanderhoven’s half-pint silver mug to her goddaughter
Mount Nod on Corris’s map of 1787: plots 225 and 226, the house next door 227 – July 2026Slideshow: 1787, 1880s and modern
Trinity Road widened and extended to Wandsworth Bridge, with underpass and "Squareabout" (1968–72, cost £4 million) – June 2026Wandsworth Bridge Southern Approach Road; finished 1972
Heathfield Gardens cottages, dilapidated and expecting demolition, saved by public campaign – June 2026Only the rear gardens taken for the Common
Streets lost between East Hill and the Thames: Elmsleigh Road, Birdhurst Road, Flavell Road, Coligny and Cotman Streets, York Road etc. – June 2026Small photo gallery from the Elam Collection
East Hill Estate (1926–28, on the site of the Fishmongers’ Almshouses), demolished by 1981 – June 2026
Trinity Road: Origins (1870s?), Extension, Underpass – May 2026
Wandsworth Common Station: Platform Planter with Local References – May 2026
Trinity Road: Origins (1870s?), Extension, Underpass – April 2026
Wandsworth Bridge: Location & History – April 2026
Loxley Road: Simon Wilson (Tate Curator) Resident – April 2026
Nicosia Road: Toast Rack Area; Henry Rounthwaite at No.15 – March 2026
Lyford Road: John Henry Dearle ("Red Thorn") – March 2026
St Ann’s Hill: Helen (Noble) Thomas’s Family (from 1893) – March 2026
Battersea/Wandsworth Parish Boundary: "Ghost Road" Across Common – December 2025, part 1
Fernside, near Balham station, advertised for sale in The Times; considered for the boys’ asylum – October 2025, part 2
Trinity Road tube station renamed Tooting Bec – October 2025, part 1With the history of the tube map: topographical maps, Harry Beck’s 1931 draft, Beck’s map in use by 1936
A proposed circumnavigation (beating the bounds) of Wandsworth Common, about 5 miles – October 2025, part 1Route traces the enclosures of 1800-1871
William Faden’s "The country twenty-five miles round London" (1790 printing): the Common before enclosure – June 2025, part 2No straight Trinity Road; the Falcon Brook prominent
The LCC builds the Fitzhugh Estate’s five eleven-storey blocks in the Patriotic grounds (c.1953-55) – May 2024
John Archer School closes and is demolished; housing estate, bridge and John Archer Way follow – May 2024
J. P. Ede on the "arboreal tunnel" beyond the Cat’s Back Bridge – March 2024, part 1
LCC 1913 Map: Boundary Changes, Extension Restored, Island History – July 2025, part 1
William Faden’s "The country twenty-five miles round London" (1790 printing): the Common before enclosure – June 2025, part 2No straight Trinity Road; the Falcon Brook prominent
William Faden’s "A New Topographical Map of the Country in the Vicinity of London", 4th edition, from a new survey – June 2025, part 2
Memories of Trinity Road before and after the extension: Hugh Betterton, Graham Jackson, Fred Pearce – June 2026
The Proud City (1946): Ministry of Information Film – May 2026
Geoffrey Bevington Album Video (30 April 2026) – May 2026
Jay & Mark’s Video: "London’s Unfinished Motorways" (c.2010) – May 2026
The Proud City (1946): Ministry of Information Film – April 2026
Magic Lantern Show: "Wandsworth Common since 1945" (5 February 2026) – February 2026
Falcon Brook Talks (27 January 2026, 15 February 2026) – January 2026
Barbara Windsor (née Madsen) remembers Saturday morning pictures at the Granada and life in a prefab on St Mark’s Triangle – March 2025, part 2Also the Century cinema, Northcote Road
Graham Jackson’s letter: Sir Walter St John’s Trust, its windfall, and ownership of Trinity Fields – September 2026Trust wound up 1992; Trinity Fields Trust lease 1996, renewed 2017
Plan to turn Mount Nod into a public recreation ground averted by A.G. Browning and others – July 2026Proceedings of the Huguenot Society of London
Wandsworth Society plaque in Mount Nod marks 300 years since the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes – July 2026Lines from Housman’s A Shropshire Lad; black mulberry planted
First meeting of the Heritage/History of Wandsworth Common group, County Arms – July 2026Follow-up meeting 20 March 2019
Stephen Midlane presented with a farewell plaque at the Friends of Wandsworth Common party – July 2026Stephen and Doris move to Bristol; list of his Chronicles appearances
Wandsworth Heritage Festival (23 May–14 June 2026) – May 2026
Secret WW2 Learning Network plaque unveiled at Le Gothique, Royal Victoria Patriotic Building – June 2025, part 2Talk by Paul McCue; video by John Crossland
Baden-Powell writes Scouting for Boys at the Manor House by the Windmill, Wimbledon Common – March 2025, part 2Inspired partly by Ernest Thompson Seton’s Woodcraft Indians
Philip Boys’s talk "Stories from the Surrey Pauper Lunatic Asylum, Burntwood Lane", Wandsworth Heritage Festival – May 2024Asylum opened 1841; later Springfield Hospital
Wandsworth Society plants a mulberry at the Huguenot Burial Ground for the 300th anniversary of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes – March 2024, part 1
Cycle clubs carry on despite raids: "Grace’s Gruelling Grind" leaves Marcilly Road – September 2023, part 2Norwood News
Proposed Metropolitan Board of Works bye-laws for the Common (no carpet-beating, fishing, music, games or speeches without consent) – September 2023, part 2
Navvies and Bricklayers’ Labourers’ Union meeting at the corner of Chatham Road – September 2023, part 2
Social History: Class, Gender, Occupation, Family Life
Elizabeth Vanderhoven, widow of St Luke’s Chelsea, makes her will, asking to be buried at Mount Nod – October 2026Leaves her household goods to Judith Grolleau
Emanuel School takes its last intake of boys on free places – September 2026Philip was a free-place boy from 1960
First fee-paying boys arrive at Emanuel – September 2026
Emanuel goes co-educational: first girls in Year 7 – September 2026A return to Lady Dacre’s intention; girls had gone to Grey Coat Hospital in 1873
Clapham County School for Girls merged with Marianne Thornton School to form Walsingham School – September 2026Head Miss Viner resigned; Walsingham closed 1993; Quondam plaque 1997
Elizabeth Vanderhoven dies (headstone: 14 March 1749, Old Style) – August 2026Shares a grave at Mount Nod with her "beloved Friend" Judith Grolleau
Judith Grolleau of Knightsbridge makes her will: earliest known legal use of the name "Mount Nod" – August 2026Leaves Mrs Vanderhoven’s half-pint silver mug to her goddaughter
Judith Grolleau dies; buried with Elizabeth Vanderhoven at Mount Nod – August 2026Will proved 6 November 1750
Women in shared graves: the Etchingham–Oxenbridge brass (c.1480) and the Ladies of Llangollen – August 2026Comparisons for the Mount Nod pair
Other local women worth knowing: L.S. Bevington, Angela Carter, Irene Caudwell, Shirley Passmore, Sophia Sheppard, Gladys Turquet-Milnes and more – August 2026
Council paper records clearance of "400 dwellings and seventy shops" for the Trinity Road scheme – June 2026Nigel Black counts 380 houses street by street (table in the Chronicle)
Betterton family moved from 26 West Side to Morville House, Fitzhugh Estate, for the road works – June 2026Hugh Betterton’s recollections
Streets lost between East Hill and the Thames: Elmsleigh Road, Birdhurst Road, Flavell Road, Coligny and Cotman Streets, York Road etc. – June 2026Small photo gallery from the Elam Collection
The Royal Victoria Patriotic Asylum for Boys receives its first orphans – October 2025, part 2Based on Bernard Slater’s Portcullis articles (1872-1882)
Local Government Board inspector reports on both asylums after an epidemic among the girls – October 2025, part 2Dr Muter blamed sewage farming and the boys’ school well
Alfred George Hacker, on active service, sends a postcard of a French Zouave boy to his son Ken at 20 Gorst Road – October 2025, part 1Sarah Vey later researched the Hacker family
P.Y. Betts (Phyllis Yvonne Betts, 1909–c.2000s): Memoir "People Who Say Goodbye" – September 2025, part 2
P.Y. Betts (Phyllis Yvonne Betts, 1909–c.2000s): Memoir "People Who Say Goodbye" – September 2025, part 1
Jeanie Senior: First Female Civil Servant (Inspector of Workhouses, 1874) – July 2025, part 1
J. P. Ede’s letter "Tomahawks and Blood" in the South Western Star: boys playing Red Indians on the Common – March 2025, part 2
Edward Thomas’s childhood games of Sioux and Mohicans; Board-school boys versus the grammar school – March 2025, part 2From his memoir The Childhood of Edward Thomas
The Last of the Mohicans showing at the Granada Wandsworth Road and the Grand Clapham Junction – March 2025, part 2
The Granada cinema, Clapham Junction, opens – March 2025, part 2Built on the site of Battersea Grammar School
Barbara Windsor (née Madsen) remembers Saturday morning pictures at the Granada and life in a prefab on St Mark’s Triangle – March 2025, part 2Also the Century cinema, Northcote Road
Davy Crockett fever: playground parodies recorded by the Opies in Tooting and Battersea – March 2025, part 2
Wandsworth Training College, an emergency teacher-training college for demobbed servicemen, at the Royal Victoria Patriotic Building – May 2024Group photograph 1949-50; recollections of emergency-trained teachers by Cathy Rowntree and Hugh Betterton
Childhood Memories & Free Play (1950s–60s) – April 2024
J. P. Ede’s "Tomahawks and Blood": boys playing Red Indians, smeared with blackberry juice – March 2024, part 1
Cycle clubs carry on despite raids: "Grace’s Gruelling Grind" leaves Marcilly Road – September 2023, part 2Norwood News
Footballers need shower-baths, not horse troughs: washing facilities at Wandsworth Common condemned – September 2023, part 2Kensington Post
T. W. Cole defends the LCC’s provision for games on the Common – September 2023, part 218 football pitches, 24 tennis courts, putting and bowling greens
Fight at the Freemason’s Tavern (now the Roundhouse), clubhouse of the Wandsworth Cricket Club – September 2023, part 2
Navvies and Bricklayers’ Labourers’ Union meeting at the corner of Chatham Road – September 2023, part 2
Commemorations & Public History: Plaques, Statues, Memorials, Exhibitions
St Matthew’s, Brixton (C.F. Porden) and St Anne’s, Wandsworth (Smirke): "Waterloo" churches compared – October 2026
Daily News letter claims Huguenot bones disturbed in building the new Catholic church – October 2026
Jas. A. Rochford’s reply in the Daily News: no bones disturbed – October 2026
Elizabeth Vanderhoven, widow of St Luke’s Chelsea, makes her will, asking to be buried at Mount Nod – October 2026Leaves her household goods to Judith Grolleau
James Buchanan photographs the Grolleau–Vanderhoven headstone today – October 2026
Anne Sackville, Lady Dacre, makes the will that founds Emanuel Hospital (ten poor boys and ten girls) – September 2026Dacre monument in Chelsea Old Church; kneeling figures in Westminster Abbey
Fitzhugh Estate block names (Morville, St Quentin, Gernigan, Skipsea, Woodhall) come from the Dacre arms and manors – September 2026
Elizabeth Vanderhoven dies (headstone: 14 March 1749, Old Style) – August 2026Shares a grave at Mount Nod with her "beloved Friend" Judith Grolleau
Judith Grolleau dies; buried with Elizabeth Vanderhoven at Mount Nod – August 2026Will proved 6 November 1750
Open House Festival: local buildings open, including St Mark’s Schoolhouse, Emanuel School, St Anne’s and the Quaker Meeting House – August 202612–20 September 2026
Philip visits Mount Nod, the Huguenot Burial Ground, while waiting for a 170 bus – July 2026Start of the Mount Nod sequence
Mrs Basil Holmes (Isabella Holmes) visits Mount Nod and the Quaker burial ground for The London Burial Grounds (1896) – July 2026
Plan to turn Mount Nod into a public recreation ground averted by A.G. Browning and others – July 2026Proceedings of the Huguenot Society of London
W.G. Tarrant’s Huguenot memorial erected in Mount Nod – July 2026Names on the base: Barbot, Baudouin, Paggen, Grolleau etc.
Wandsworth Society plaque in Mount Nod marks 300 years since the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes – July 2026Lines from Housman’s A Shropshire Lad; black mulberry planted
Mount Nod restored by Enable after years of decay (five table tombs on Heritage at Risk register, 2012) – July 2026Restoration 2019–22; Huguenot Burial Ground Management Plan 2010–15
Heathfield Gardens cottages, dilapidated and expecting demolition, saved by public campaign – June 2026Only the rear gardens taken for the Common
Dorrett & Martin Photo Exhibition (Northcote Road Library, 15 May 2026+) – May 2026
Bellevue Road 160 Years: Talk (26 May 2026) & Walk (30 May 2026) – May 2026
John Davis & Patricia Mella Memorial Bench (The Avenue, near Trinity Road) – March 2026
Secret WW2 Learning Network plaque unveiled at Le Gothique, Royal Victoria Patriotic Building – June 2025, part 2Talk by Paul McCue; video by John Crossland
St Mark’s (originally St Mary’s) Infants School, Battersea Rise, built on the Common – March 2025, part 2Philip Boys’s candidate for a blue plaque
Restoration of the Patriotic Building chapel organ commemorated by a plaque – May 2024Plaque rescued by Cathy Rowntree
Wandsworth Society plants a mulberry at the Huguenot Burial Ground for the 300th anniversary of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes – March 2024, part 1
Personal & Family History: Philip Boys’ Connections
Philip starts at Emanuel School on a free place from Earlsfield School – September 2026
Philip visits Mount Nod, the Huguenot Burial Ground, while waiting for a 170 bus – July 2026Start of the Mount Nod sequence
Edward Perry Warren (EPW): Philip’s Father’s Godfather – March 2026
Edward James Boys: Philip’s Father (Christened 2 Jan 1917) – March 2026
Philip Boys’s Lone Star rifle smashed by bullies on "Bushy Common" (the Scope) on Christmas Day, mid-1950s – March 2025, part 2
Philip Boys: Childhood in Prison Quarters (1950s–60s) – April 2024
Philip Boys: 75th Anniversary Year (2024) – April 2024
Philip Boys at 75: the Common and its surrounds in 1949, with his mother Lemonia (née Asnay) in the prison Quarters – March 2024, part 2Aerial photograph of Wandsworth Prison and its environs, 1949
Richard Fox waters the Common’s young trees during the drought – July 2026Video
Danny Cowan lands a specimen carp at the pond – July 2026
Land added to the Common in exchange for Trinity Road: Prison Banks, old Marcilly Road, land by the Patriotic Building, Heathfield Gardens – June 2026Prison Banks now rich in wildflowers (Roy Vickery walk, 2023)
Missel-Thrushes, Swallows, House-Martins, Sand-Martins: Edward Thomas Observations – March 2026
Lake Wildlife & Ponds: Island, Hidden Reclining Man, Bush Fire – November 2025, part 2
Mulberry Tree at Knapdale: Reputedly Planted by John Locke – July 2025, part 2
J. P. Ede’s first letter to the South Western Star: woken by a cuckoo at 39 Broomwood Road – March 2024, part 1Weekly nature letters about the Common through 1949
J. P. Ede lists the plants on the railway embankment by Spencer Park – March 2024, part 1Illustrated with Cicely Mary Barker’s Flower Fairies
J. P. Ede: "Bronze, Silver and Gold" — copper beeches, silver birches and gorse on the Common – March 2024, part 1
J. P. Ede sees a hawk over the Common and swans on the Thames – March 2024, part 1
J. P. Ede on bird sanctuaries invaded: moorhen chicks on the islands; recalls Edward Thomas bird-nesting – March 2024, part 1
J. P. Ede on the "arboreal tunnel" beyond the Cat’s Back Bridge – March 2024, part 1
J. P. Ede reports a fruiting mulberry tree near the Common – March 2024, part 1Peter Farrow: a mulberry planted at the Huguenot Burial Ground by the Wandsworth Society, 1985
Wandsworth Society plants a mulberry at the Huguenot Burial Ground for the 300th anniversary of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes – March 2024, part 1
J. P. Ede finds goat’s-beard by the bridge near the bombed Plough on St John’s Hill – March 2024, part 1The Plough and Dick Turpin
J. P. Ede finds no ferns on the Common, only horsetail by the railway – March 2024, part 1
J. P. Ede mistakes a duck and ducklings on the pond for a Viking ship – March 2024, part 1
J. P. Ede sees an injured heron captured by a keeper at the Cat’s Back Bridge – March 2024, part 1With a note on the Revd Theodore Wood, naturalist vicar of St Mary Magdalene
J. P. Ede finds fly agaric ("scarlet flycaps") on the Common – March 2024, part 1Beatrix Potter’s governess Annie Moore lived at 20 Baskerville Road, 1888-1950
Paul McCartney films the video for "Waterfalls" on a set on Wandsworth Common, with Olaf the polar bear – June 2025, part 2Where on the Common? Readers’ memories wanted
Davy Crockett fever: playground parodies recorded by the Opies in Tooting and Battersea – March 2025, part 2
Restoration of the Patriotic Building chapel organ commemorated by a plaque – May 2024Plaque rescued by Cathy Rowntree
Spencer Park School boys stage a Son et Lumière at the Patriotic Building, with Sybil Thorndike as the voice of Queen Victoria – May 2024
Battersea and Wandsworth Military Band plays its weekly concert on the Common – September 2023, part 2
Thomas’s Clapham takes over the former Clapham County School buildings, Broomwood Road – September 2026Also Battersea Grammar (1994) and Hearnville School
Gray & Lucas, 12 High Street, advertise garden watering engines and hose – July 2026Metallurgicon Local Directory
Trinity Road widened and extended to Wandsworth Bridge, with underpass and "Squareabout" (1968–72, cost £4 million) – June 2026Wandsworth Bridge Southern Approach Road; finished 1972
Council paper records clearance of "400 dwellings and seventy shops" for the Trinity Road scheme – June 2026Nigel Black counts 380 houses street by street (table in the Chronicle)
The French Horn & Half Moon, 37 East Hill: pub, coroner’s court and auction house, demolished for the road – June 2026Rebuilt once before c.1900 for Woodwell Street; licensee Bill Kennedy
Bellevue Road: Evolution from Drapers to Dog Groomers, Spas (160 Years) – May 2026
K.L.G. Spark Plug Factory: Replaces Bald-Faced Stag Inn (c.1912) – December 2025, part 1
J. T. Chappell contracts to build the boys’ asylum to Henry Saxon Snell’s design – October 2025, part 2Snell later famous for hospitals
Trinity Road (Tooting Bec) station opens on the Morden extension of the City & South London Railway – October 2025, part 1
Trinity Road tube station renamed Tooting Bec – October 2025, part 1With the history of the tube map: topographical maps, Harry Beck’s 1931 draft, Beck’s map in use by 1936
The Century cinema, 15 Northcote Road (Bolingbroke Assembly Hall 1880, Globe 1930, Century 1951) closes – March 2025, part 2Later Tesco, KwikSave, Somerfield, Co-op
The LCC builds the Fitzhugh Estate’s five eleven-storey blocks in the Patriotic grounds (c.1953-55) – May 2024
Wandsworth Council’s Recreation Committee proposes radical development of the Common, including an Olympic-standard athletics track – May 2024Defeated: 81.5% of users in a Wandsworth Society survey wanted the Common unchanged (Shirley Passmore)
Chez Bruce Restaurant: Modern Incarnation of Bellevue Road Butcher/Slaughterhouse – May 2023