John Charles Buckmaster (JCB) was a local teacher. In the late 1860s he was approached by two locals, angry that the land they were growing potatoes on had been enclosed and their potatoes destroyed. Buckmaster organised demonstrations and meetings, a letter writing campaign and a petition to Earl Spencer. But legal change was required and thanks to the efforts of Buckmaster and others, in 1871 an Act of Parliament was passed which transferred the Common from Earl Spencer to public ownership. In 2021 we celebrated the 150th anniversary of this important milestone and placed a plaque to John Buckmaster on the wall of the Skylark Café.

A group of eight conservators then managed the Common for 16 years, beginning the transition from rubbish-strewn unkempt space to what we see today. They were replaced by the Metropolitan Board of Works in 1887 and the London County Council (LCC) a year later. The LCC became the GLC in 1965 and then ownership of Wandsworth Common devolved to Wandsworth Borough Council on the demise of the GLC in 1986. The Commons Act 2006 is the best subsequent safeguard the Common has had. The Common is now managed on behalf of Wandsworth Council by Enable.

Bellevue Field, in front of Bellevue Road, used to have sheep grazing on it, brought down from Scotland every year to end up in the butchers, now home to the Chez Bruce restaurant! A little further north, the main lake was once a gravel pit. There were once many more but all but two were filled in. This one was enlarged and landscaped after 1871 by private donations. Look left towards the ToastRack, the houses bounded by Baskerville, Dorlcote, Trinity and Routh Roads. This area was one of the first major enclosures in 1822 for plant nurseries. The land was owned by Sofia Sheppard, sister of Martin Routh, President of Magdalen College, Oxford. Magdalen developed the area in the 1880s and many of the road names have connections with Magdalen college. David Lloyd George lived here (spot the Blue Plaque) and Beatrix Potter was a frequent visitor as her children’s nanny lived on Baskerville Road.

Further north, past The Skylark Café and on the edge of the Fitzhugh Estate, is the Royal Victoria Patriotic Building — completed in 1859 on 52 acres of the Common, to house and educate the orphan daughters of servicemen killed in the Crimean War. Later it became a school and then, in 1914, London’s Third General Hospital, with easy access to the railway and numerous additional huts and tents around it. In WW2 it became an interrogation centre for refugees from Europe and an internment camp. Its inmates included Friedelind Wagner, grandaughter of composer Richard Wagner and, with his mother, Herbert Levy, the future curator of the Anne Frank Exhibition. There is a display of the building’s rich and varied history inside.

Bolingbroke Fields runs N-S along the eastern side of the railway, past the Three Island Pond up to Chivalry Road. Three Island Pond is one of the oldest landscape features on the Common, visible on a map drawn in 1787 and described as a ‘little gem’ in 1898. Further north still, passing the concrete base of an old drinking fountain, and beyond St Mary’s cemetery, is St Mark’s Triangle, close to where John Buckmaster lived and the site of the many demonstrations against enclosure in the 1870s.

The Scope, in the opposite, south west corner of the Common, is now the main woodland area. Once a rough, gorse and scrub covered open space, it gets its name from an enormous telescope constructed near Lyford Road in 1852 by the Rev. James Craig. At the time it was the largest refracting telescope in the world. However, problems with the lens and increasing pollution meant it lasted only a few years. It was dismantled, with little trace remaining save, allegedly, for a few bricks used in the construction of the buildings on the corner of Bellevue Road and Trinity Road.

The History Blog