The title is Wandsworth Town to differentiate it from the wider area generally known as Wandsworth, which is in fact the London Borough of Wandsworth, which was formed in 1965 from the previous area of the Metropolitan Borough of Battersea and much of the former Metropolitan Borough of Wandsworth, but excluding Clapham and most of Streatham, both of which were transferred to the London Borough of Lambeth. It includes many well known areas such as Tooting, Balham, Earlsfield, Putney and Roehampton. Clapham is quite near, but oddly, Clapham Junction station is in Battersea, and not Clapham.

Wandsworth Town itself is an inner suburb of London on the south bank of the River Thames. It takes its name from the River Wandle, which enters the Thames at Wandsworth. As with all these old boroughs of London, it goes back a long way. In the Doomsday Book of 1086 its assets were 12 hides, 5½ ploughs and 22 acres of meadow. It rendered £9. Things have changed a bit, and nowadays, at least according to an article in The Guardian: “Wandsworth has a greater proportion of people whose lifestyle, views and trends shape the zeitgeist more than anywhere else in the UK. Wandsworth, in other words, is groovier than anywhere else in Britain.” According to the Evening Standard “Wandsworth is the hotspot” for those people in London earning over £100,000.
There are a few interesting buildings in Wandsworth, including Wandsworth Prison and Young & Co’s Ram Brewery, right in the centre of town. Traditional draught beer was produced on the site from 1581, which made the Ram Brewery the oldest site in Britain on which beer had been brewed continuously. Until late in 2006, horse-drawn brewery drays were still used to deliver beer to local pubs. The brewery closed in 2006 when Young & Co merged with Charles Wells of Bedford. The site has since been sold to real estate developers, so The Ram Inn, or Brewery Tap, will be long gone next time I’m in Wandsworth, and more apartment and office buildings will be rising on Wandsworth High Street.
There are however no plans to close Wandsworth Prison. It is the largest prison in the UK, currently able to hold 1665 prisoners. Alongside Liverpool, which is of similar size, it is one of the largest prisons in Western Europe. It has had a few famous inmates, including Oscar Wilde and more recently Ronnie Biggs, of the Great Train Robbery, who as we all know managed to escape, flee the country, and eventually end up in Rio de Janeiro, where he lived in freedom for many years.
Down Magdalen Road, a pleasant tree-lined avenue with Wandsworth cemetery on one side and residential streets on the other, and some allotments still lovingly tilled by local residents, there is a school called the Beatrix Potter School. Back in 1939 it was called Magdalene Road School, and that year the school was evacuated to Shamley Green, in Surrey, for most of WWII. This year, 2009, 70 years later, the school reenacted the evacuation, and 200 children (including two of my grandchildren – Olivia and Elvis), clutching gas mask cases, wearing labels with their names on and carrying ration books, dressed as their predecessors would have been when war broke out 70 years ago, and accompanied by teachers in period dress as well as six of the original evacuees, travelled down to Surrey by steam train, where they were hosted by children and teachers from local schools. The project, which was a year in the planning, was devised by the head of Beatrix Potter School, Steph Neale, and was based on a log book detailing the evacuation by the headmaster at the time, Arthur Crosskey.
Wandsworth has several large shopping areas and the most open green space of any inner London borough. Particularly attractive is the recently restored Battersea Park. The 200 acre park has facilities for both sports and leisure, including the Millennium Arena, a boating lake, sports pitches, a café, art gallery and green areas for walking and general enjoyment. The borough borders the All England Lawn Tennis Club in Wimbledon, which is the 2012 Olympic venue for tennis. It hosts the annual Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race and is home to the British Olympic Association.
Wandsworth Common is a large green area that has for centuries offered a place to relax, to play and to simply escape the hustle and bustle of city life. The 175-acre park has several quite distinct elements to it including flower gardens and ecological conservation areas, sports pitches and wild wooded sections left in their natural state to attract wildlife. It is amazing to see so much park land in a borough like Wandsworth, and apart from the Common and official parks, there are plenty of sports fields, and even a 9 hole golf course called the Central London Golf Center. Fondly known to certain Cariocas who have played there as the Royal Wandsworth, it was built on some spare playing fields, and is not terribly imaginative or challenging, but is claimed to be the only golf course that close to the centre of London. The facilities are good, including a netted driving range, which is always busy.
When I first started going up to London from my home in Reigate, Surrey, in the 50s, Wandsworth was not a district one would wish to visit. Nowadays it is one of the most sought out residential areas of London, and even the terrace houses built in the 30s or even earlier are high in the real estate stakes. The borough now tries to live up to its slogan – “Wandsworth, the Brighter Borough”.

Article courtesy of The Umbrella magazine - for more see Umbrella