Home › Building histories › Allfarthing Piece to Toast Rack
– Introduction
– The Development of Allfarthing Piece Begins
– Applications for New Streets 1868–1900
– Building the “Toast Rack”
– The Builders
– Conclusion
– Acknowledgements
– Notes
This paper discusses the building of the area on either side of Trinity Road, Wandsworth Common, between Wandsworth Prison and the south-west corner of Wandsworth Common. Although this well-defined corner of Wandsworth is relatively small, it nevertheless has an interesting history. In recent years it has acquired the epithet “The Toast Rack” from the configuration of its streets on the east side of Trinity Road.
This small corner of Wandsworth has its roots as a small detached portion of Allfarthing manor. Allfarthing Piece comprised thirty acres of land, presumably intended to give this manor access to grazing and woodland resources. It retained its identity until its dramatic transformation into a group of mid- to late-Victorian suburban streets. It formed part of a large estate owned from the mid-nineteenth century by Magdalen College, Oxford. This estate survived intact as a result of the college making a far-sighted decision to obtain an Act of Parliament in the earliest days of the transformation of Wandsworth from a part-rural, part-industrial community astride one of the principal roads radiating from London into a suburb. The Act permitted the College to sell land and to develop it on its own account, and was preceded by the building of the London & Southampton Railway in the late-1830s.
The emphasis in this paper is on the builders who were active from the late-1870s until the First World War. A comprehensive history of the beginnings of the estate and its connections with Magdalen College, Oxford is provided by Peter Jefferson Smith’s excellent account of the lives of the I’Anson family of architects and surveyors.1 Also invaluable is the Oxford & London Building Company’s website, which has many illustrations.2 The 150th Anniversary of the Wandsworth Common Act of 1871, which rescued what remained of the common from the attentions of developers and builders, was marked by a profusely-illustrated book by the Friends of Wandsworth Common.3
From medieval times until the early 19th century, the study area formed part of the manor of Allfarthing. It was not fully incorporated into the manor of Battersea and Wandsworth when the whole area, together with neighbouring Wimbledon manor, came into the hands of the Earls Spencer. Allfarthing was assigned a small area of common land known as Allfarthing Piece. This lay on the western fringe of Wandsworth Common, astride the long straight trackway which ultimately became Trinity Road. John Corris’s survey and map of 1787 gave the area as 37.39 acres.
The first detailed survey and map of the study area is the Wandsworth Tithe Map & Apportionment of 1841, when the entire “Toast Rack” was owned by Sophia Sheppard.
| Plot | Occupier | Land Use | Plot | Occupier | Land Use |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 531 | Rough, George | Mkt Garden | 569 | Outbuildings | |
| 563 | Wallis, William | 2 hos. | 571 | Furlley | House/Outbldgs |
| 564 | 2 hos. | 572 | Neale, Robert | Mkt Garden | |
| 565 | Outbuildings | 573 | 2 hos. | ||
| 566 | Briggs, John | Outbuildings | 574 | 1 hos. | |
| 567 | Ho./Outbldgs | 575 | Building | ||
| 567a | Outbuildings | 576–578 | 3 hos. | ||
| 568 | Outbuildings | 579 | Hart, Richard |
The “Area Book” accompanying the 1st Edition of the OS 25-inch plan (1868) gives precisely-measured areas. The total for Allfarthing Piece is 34.14 acres, including a 1.3-acre strip of Battersea along the eastern fringe. Scarcely any houses had been built since 1841, mostly associated with the Neal family of market gardeners and nurserymen.
The first hints of significant change came in 1852. Most unusually for what would otherwise have become another tract of middle-class South London suburbia with fragmented ownership, the transformation of nursery and market garden land was made possible when Magdalen College obtained an Act of Parliament, enabling it to develop its Wandsworth estate for building.4
The college had only recently acquired the land. The story begins in 1801, when Sophia Routh (1763–1848), the daughter of a Wiltshire clergyman, married Thomas Sheppard (1727–1814), the President of Magdalen College. Sophia died intestate, which opened the way for Magdalen to acquire her extensive property in Wandsworth. The land in question extended from the hamlet of Allfarthing to the Tooting boundary, bounded on the east by Wandsworth Common and on the west by the Southampton Railway, which had been renamed the London & South Western Railway in 1839. Initially, the first intermediate station was located at Battersea Rise/North Side and optimistically named ‘Wandsworth’.5 The present Wandsworth Common station opened in November 1869, within easy walking distance of the Toast Rack.
Another major change affecting the area was the opening of the Surrey House of Correction (now Wandsworth Prison) in 1851. It does not appear to have had much effect on the types of houses built on Allfarthing Piece or the social class of their occupiers. Road access to the development was by Trinity Road, an ancient routeway along the western edge of Wandsworth Common. Edward I’Anson, Magdalen College’s chosen architect and developer for the estate, also included a road parallel with the railway down to Garratt Lane, initially called Magdalena Road.
The MBW sanctioned a batch of new streets applied for by Edward I’Anson in November 1868. All had names connected to Magdalen College: Henderson, Magdalena, Patten and Routh Roads. In addition, the existing lane between Wandsworth and Tooting (Trinity Road) was to be widened. Apart from the Prison, Magdalen’s new venture had a clear view of the Royal Victoria Patriotic Asylum/School, built in 1859 for the orphaned daughters of Crimean War soldiers. With the exception of Dorlcote Road, views of the Common could only be had from residents’ rear gardens.
There had been little building activity on Allfarthing Piece by the time I’Anson made a second application for streets in June 1882. The names approved were: Routh, Patten, Nicosia, Baskerville and Dorlcote Roads. Nicosia commemorates the leasing of Cyprus from the Ottoman Empire in 1878; all others were “Magdalen” names. Lyford Road, which marks the western boundary of the Toast Rack, finally made its appearance in July 1884, as part of a large application by I’Anson for no fewer than seventeen new streets, although many of them were never used in practice.
A link between the Toast Rack and the rest of the Magdalen estate finally came with the approval of an extension of Routh Road across Trinity Road to Lyford Road in December 1890. A block of streets between Garratt Lane and Swaby Road was approved by the LCC in November 1900. By then Magdalen’s local agent was architect William Clinch Poole (1852–1911). Poole was born at Southampton, where he served his apprenticeship. From the late-1870s he was at no.62 Belleville Road, Battersea, where he died, leaving a modest estate valued at £3,199.
When building finally began in earnest on this part of the Magdalen estate in the early-1880s, progress was quite rapid by contemporary standards. A total of 258 houses was built between 1881 and 1900, an average of thirteen per year.
| Location | Year | Houses |
|---|---|---|
| Baskerville Road | 1883–1894 | 37 |
| Dorlcote Road | 1884–1894 | 20 |
| Henderson Road | 1898–1899 | 36 |
| Lyford Road | 1892–1900 | 12 |
| Nicosia Road | 1884–1891 | 31 |
| Patten Road | 1884–1889 | 21 |
| Routh Road | 1882–1893 | 27 |
| Trinity Road | 1881–1897 | 74 |
| Total | 258 |
The Magdalen College estate was one of relatively few in Wandsworth where the landowner and its agents were actively involved from the beginning. Most houses on this part of the estate were semi-detached, three-storey villas aimed at the middle-class market. The socio-economic structure of the Toast Rack once completed shows that this policy was largely successful.
| Name | Year | Houses | Name | Year | Houses |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Robertson, Thomas | 1887–1893 | 56 | Taverner, J | 1896 | 6 |
| Hutchison, Thomas | 1884–1894 | 47 | Holloway Bros | 1897/1900 | 5 |
| Kynock, Charles | 1881–1887 | 46 | Fewster, William | 1895 | 4 |
| Duncanson, James | 1884–1889 | 21 | Wade, Frederick | 1884/1886 | 4 |
| Hurst, Stephen | 1898 | 18 | Smith, G T | 1881 | 3 |
| Kerven, H J | 1899 | 18 | Carmichael, James | 1892 | 2 |
| Heaver, Alfred | 1887 | 12 | Scott, W | 1897 | 2 |
| Reeve, G C | 1893/1894 | 8 | Tanner, J | 1895 | 2 |
| Total | 258 |
The seventeen builders who worked here fall into three distinct groups. Three were large-scale builders by contemporary standards who built 149 houses (58%). Four medium-sized builders contributed sixty-nine houses (27%). Amongst them was Alfred Heaver (1841–1901), a major estate developer in Battersea and Wandsworth in his own right. The remaining thirty-seven houses (14%) were the work of ten builders. Most unusually for Wandsworth, several of the most important builders in this small area were Scottish.
[Fig. 1: Thomas Robertson]
Robertson was born at Farnell in Angus, the son of a farmer. He was employed as an engine fitter at Arbroath in 1871. By 1881 he had married and moved to Kennington, employed as a gas engineer. He is first recorded in the Battersea District Surveyor’s Returns (DSRs) in 1882, where he built thirty-five houses over the next three years. This sudden change of occupation is unexplained. Whatever the reasons for Robertson’s change of profession, he was clearly in the front rank of local builders in the 1880s and 1890s, with a total of 137 houses, of which seventy were in Wandsworth. His output in the Toast Rack was concentrated in Routh Road and the adjacent section of Trinity Road. Thomas Robertson died at no.21 Lyford Road in May 1946. His estate was valued at £29,947.
Hutchison was born in Perthshire. In 1881 he was living in Streatham, working as a carpenter. By 1891 he had progressed to ‘builder’, living at no.1 Nicosia Road. He built forty-seven houses in the Toast Rack between 1884 and 1894. Hutchison, like many another Victorian builder, appears to have over-reached himself. In 1901 he was living in Lewisham and gave his occupation as ‘carpenter’. Ten years later he was a ‘late’ carpenter, aged seventy-one. He died intestate at Lewisham in 1916.
Kynock was born at Clunie, Perthshire. He had arrived in Brixton by 1870, giving his occupation as ‘builder’ in 1871 and employing seventeen men. He built forty-six houses on the Toast Rack between 1881 and 1887. In 1882, Kynock built the terrace of six shops on the east side of Trinity Road, the only commercial premises in the Toast Rack. On 16th May 1884, a lease on no.5 Nicosia Road was given by Magdalen College to Charles Kynock of Clapham and Thomas Hutchison of Wiseton Road, both builders.6 On 11th August that year a lease of premises in Patten Road was granted by Magdalen to Kynock and James Duncanson of Brixton.
In 1901, aged sixty-eight, Kynock was a boarder in Dulwich living on his own means. By 1911 he had been widowed and was a boarder at Brislington, a suburb of Bristol, aged seventy-seven and describing his occupation as ‘retired builder & contractor’. He died intestate shortly after the 1911 Census. These scattered records suggest that Kynock, like many a Victorian builder, had encountered significant financial difficulties.
Duncanson was born at Cairneyhill in Fife. He was a joiner by trade who had moved to south-west London by 1871. He lived at no.72 Angell Road, Brixton for the rest of his life, always giving his occupation as ‘builder’, sometimes with no domestic servants, at other times with one or two. He built twenty-one houses in the Toast Rack between 1884 and 1889. He died in 1914, leaving an estate of £367.
Hurst made only one appearance on the Toast Rack, building eighteen houses in 1898, all in Henderson Road. Born at Winchester and originally a carpenter by trade, he was living at Kentish Town in 1861. In 1871 he was a builder at North Kensington. He had moved to Hammersmith by 1881 and to Grafton Square, Clapham by 1891, on both occasions giving his trade as ‘contractor’. Hurst’s career suffered a setback in the 1890s — by 1901 he was merely a ‘builder’s foreman’ in Brixton. In 1911 he was living with his son-in-law at Chiswick, describing himself as a ‘retired builder & contractor’. Stephen Hurst died intestate in early 1916.
Kerven belonged to a dynasty of builders, known as William Kerven & Sons. Their principal activity was in Battersea, comprising 211 houses between 1885 and 1914, with an outlier of sixteen at Balham in 1904. In 1899, Henry was credited with six houses and Kerven & Son with twelve houses in Henderson Road. Henry was living in Henderson Road in 1901. He emigrated to New South Wales in 1912 and died in Queensland in 1929.
Although the Magdalen College estate in Wandsworth was notable for its extent and for having the expertise of the I’Anson family on hand to oversee the layout and types of housing, there was probably no likelihood of its being developed as a single entity given the vagaries of the building cycle and associated demand for housing in mid- to late-nineteenth century Wandsworth. The relatively small area covered by Allfarthing Piece enabled it to be successfully completed in a relatively straightforward fashion, with a limited number of builders. Apart from the short parade of shops by Charles Kynock in Trinity Road opposite the existing County Arms, the Toast Rack was wholly residential. Apart from the inevitable war damage in 1939–1945, the Victorian and Edwardian houses discussed here remain largely unchanged.
This was a middle-class suburb par excellence. In 1901, 47% of household heads belonged to the upper and middle echelons of the middle classes. Virtually all of them had one or more living-in servants. The non-manual lower middle classes accounted for 44% of households. Only 8% were from the skilled manual middle class. Semi-skilled and unskilled households accounted for a little over 1%.
One curiosity in 1901 was a Ladies’ School at 299 Trinity Road. The principal was Mary M. Maynard (59), with nine pupils, three teachers (one for French & German, one for English), and three domestic staff.
Apart from the inevitable damage during World War II, the Toast Rack remains a desirable tract of suburbia, almost wholly residential and with a large tract of common land on the east and two railway stations within walking distance.
As always, I am most grateful for all of the assistance readily given by Philip Boys with sources, copies and scans. I’m also indebted to Wandsworth Archives and the Library of Magdalen College, Oxford, for supplying copies of property deeds and plans.
1 P.J. Smith, The I’Ansons: A Dynasty of London Architects & Surveyors (2019).
3 The Wandsworth Common Story — A 150th Anniversary Celebration (2021).
4 15 & 16 Vict. c.10, 30th June 1852.
5 This station was replaced by Clapham Junction in 1863. Earlsfield did not acquire a station until 1884.
6 Wandsworth Archives (WA) Deeds 783; Deeds 73.
Draft version, August 2025. © Keith Bailey. All rights reserved.