Last modified: 13 November 2026
Edward Stanford’s street map with the geology laid over it in colour: London Clay in grey, the gravels that cap the higher ground in orange, the brickearth in pale yellow, and the alluvium of the Thames and the Wandle in cream. It runs from Fulham and Chelsea to Upper Tooting and Summerstown, and from Wimbledon Park across to Clapham and Balham. Wandsworth Common sits on a long tongue of gravel that runs south from Clapham Junction towards Tooting, between the clay of the Wandle valley and the clay of Balham; Trinity Road runs straight down it. Zoom in to read the streets.
The map. Stanford’s geological map of London and its environs, published in 1878, coloured from the Geological Survey’s mapping of the London district. The geology is laid over Stanford’s own street map, so it also records the area just as the new building estates were spreading across the old fields.
Why it matters here. The gravel helps explain why Wandsworth Common stayed a common: poor, quick-draining, hard to farm, and good for digging. It is also why the Common was pitted with gravel workings and ponds.
This copy. From the copy offered by MAPCO (Map and Plan Collection Online). Their repeated “© MAPCO 2010” watermarks have been removed, four thin straight lines left by the scanning taken out, and the white gaps between the nine joined panels of the folding original filled in. At very close zoom a faint trace of a watermark may occasionally show on the palest areas.
See also. Stanford’s Library Map, 1862, Stanford’s Library Map, 1877, and the Ordnance Survey 25-inch map of the 1860s.
Maps of this age are out of copyright. Prepared by Philip Boys, with Claude.
Build 1. Source: MAPCO.