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The County Arms, Wandsworth Common
Notes: 345 Trinity Road, by the prison
Working notes, not for publication as they stand. Points still to be checked are marked [?].
Where it stands
The County Arms is at 345 Trinity Road, on the west side of the road near the northern end of the Common, a short walk from Wandsworth Prison. Time Out calls it “a big, stately lump of a pub, dominating the north end of the Trinity Road dual carriageway”.
The name
The pub appeared just as the Surrey House of Correction opened next door in 1851. Its name almost certainly refers to the county, Surrey, whose justices built the prison. A county building on the Common would have brought a steady flow of officials, warders, visitors and carriers [a reasonable inference, not yet documented].
How old is it?
The sources disagree.
- Young’s, Time Out and Londonist all say the pub has been there “since 1852”.
- The Post Office Directory of 1855 lists William Finch at the County Arms, Wandsworth Common (pubwiki).
- pubwiki and pubology both say “c.1865”. That is contradicted by their own 1855 entry, and probably reflects the present building rather than the first pub [?].
- The OS map of 1868 marks it as the “County Arms Hotel”.
So there was a County Arms by 1855, very probably from about 1852. Whether the present grand Victorian building is the original or a rebuilding of the 1860s is still to be settled [?].
Hotel, stables and pleasure gardens
- 1868: the “County Arms Hotel” on the OS map.
- 1878: livery stables at the pub.
- An Elam postcard (Album 7), “County Arms and Gardens”, shows signs for “Illuminated Gardens” and “Concerts”: a pleasure garden behind the pub [date?].
Landlords
- 1855: William Finch (Post Office Directory).
- 1911: the census has Lound at the County Arms.
- 1945: Emma Mary Ann Rolles, widow, of the County Arms, died on 25 December 1945 at the Bolingbroke Hospital, leaving £22,063: a substantial estate.
The pub today
The County Arms is a Young’s house, listed as an Asset of Community Value. CAMRA describes it as large and comfortable, with many original Victorian features, and pictures of notorious inmates of the nearby prison on the walls, “especially in the Gents”.
CAMRA also claims that the pub’s back garden is on the site of the original county jail. That seems unlikely, since the prison of 1851 is still there [?].
It was refurbished in 2017.
Memories
- 9 June 1953: me, aged four, waving a flag outside the County Arms as the Queen and Prince Philip drove along Trinity Road after the Coronation (Chronicles, June 2022).
- The 1960s planning blight: residents believed the County Arms and the houses beside it would be demolished when Trinity Road was turned into a dual carriageway (draft Trinity Road page). The dual carriageway was built from the County Arms down to the river (Chronicles, July 2023), and the pub survived.
- A pre-1914 photograph of single-carriageway Trinity Road looking south-east towards the County Arms and Tooting (Chronicles, August 2023).
For the talk, in one sentence
Named for the county whose new prison it served from about 1852: a hotel with stables and illuminated gardens, a pub that survived the planning blight of the 1960s, and the place where a four-year-old waved at the Queen in 1953.
Sources