Last modified: 2 November 2026
The whole parish of St Mary, Battersea, as surveyed by Charles Lee of Golden Square, London, in 1838 for the commutation of tithes. Every field, garden and building is drawn and numbered; the numbers refer to the tithe apportionment, which lists each plot’s owner, occupier, use and size. Houses are coloured red and other buildings grey. The map runs from the Thames at Battersea village and Nine Elms, across the open fields and Battersea Marsh, to Lavender Hill and the big houses along the edges of Wandsworth and Clapham Commons, among them the Five Houses on Bolingbroke Grove. Zoom right in to read the plot numbers.
The map. Tithe maps were drawn after the Tithe Commutation Act of 1836, which replaced tithes paid in kind with a money rent charge. Each parish map came with an apportionment: a schedule, keyed to the plot numbers, of who owned and occupied every piece of land, what it was used for and how much it was charged. Battersea’s was surveyed in 1838. Alongside the Ordnance Survey maps of the 1860s it is the best record of the parish before the railways and the new streets.
This copy. A colour copy of the map, with the margins trimmed and cleaned up to make it easier to read: the yellowed paper evened out to a light cream, the colour washes strengthened and the pen lines sharpened. The certificates of the Tithe Commissioners (top left) and of the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries (bottom right) are kept.
See also. The Ordnance Survey 25-inch map of the 1860s and the five-foot town plan of the same years, which show the same ground about thirty years later.
Tithe maps of this age are out of copyright. Prepared by Philip Boys, with Claude.
Build 3.