Wandsworth Common

London County Council Open Air Entertainments 1951. Morley College Actors (Director: Robert Compton) present The Winter's Tale by Shakespeare, produced by Archie Harradine, performed on Wandsworth Common.

[The LCC ran a popular annual series of free open-air entertainments on London's commons and parks throughout the 1950s. Performances on Wandsworth Common were given near the bandstand.]

The future of the 90-acre farm at Springfield Hospital, Burntwood Lane, on the borders of Wandsworth and Balham, is still lying in the balance and it may be several weeks before the decision is made whether or not to turn the rolling green fields into an LCC building site.

The hospital authorities have strenuously resisted moves to use their farm, one of the last in this part of London. They point out that they were not consulted about it when the National Health Scheme was introduced in 1948.

The original plan involved certain parts of St. George's Hospital. Mr. Aneurin Bevan, then Minister of Health, visited Springfield Hospital and turned down the scheme. Now the London County Council is bringing renewed pressure on the hospital to give up the farm.

"We are fighting as hard as we can against the proposal," a hospital official told the S.W. Star. "It is a crying shame that one of the last open spaces in the heart of Tooting should be marred by building."

[Farm statistics: 90 acres; 35 cows yielding 90 gallons of milk a day (more than St. George's Hospital required); 300 pigs; 400 chickens; three horses; staff of eight men. Springfield Hospital's farm was one of the last working farms within the London boundary.]

Fulham Regency drew with Andrea on a newly laid cork pitch on Wandsworth Common — "amid such distracting disturbances as a scratch game of football, youthful cowboys chasing still younger Indians, and flashing London–Brighton expresses regularly passing through the station behind the bowler's arm."