Bill Rudd Collection: over the parish boundary

Although Bill’s main local interest was in his home parish of Morden, he was not averse from straying across parish boundaries when his attention was caught by an interesting building or group of buildings, or a railway line or station.

His photographs within the ancient parish of Merton range from Grand Drive SW20 in the west, via Merton Park in the north of the parish and Morden Road  SW19 towards the east, as far as Merton Abbey in the far east bordering Colliers Wood in Mitcham parish. They date from the 1960s and 1970s. Although most of the scanned images are of his colour slides, Bill often took matching monochrome photographs and a few of these are included here.

His forays into neighbouring Mitcham highlight two areas of special interest to Bill – his involvement in archaeology and his love of fairgrounds – while his Wimbledon views reveal his fascination with transport of all kinds – from rail and buses to horse-drawn and man-powered vehicles – and his delight in a wide range of items that might be described as ‘street furniture’ – from road signs to horse troughs.

In addition to that section of the St Helier Estate that extended into Carshalton, many of the photographs Bill took within the parishes now within the London Borough of Sutton have links with former Morden residents, as do some of those he took within the inner London area and included on this website.