The Bridges and Roads of Mitcham

by E N Montague

Bridges and Roads deals first with the construction and maintenance over the centuries of Mitcham’s bridges over the Wandle and the Graveney, and then with the history of its turnpike highways and its parish roads. The last section looks at some of the more romantic aspects of road travel in the past. There is a useful index.

‘Monty’ has distilled his notes on this subject accumulated over some years into this booklet, which is illustrated with maps and pictures, and fully annotated.

Review in MHS Bulletin 136 (Dec 2000)

THE BRIDGES
AND ROADS
OF MITCHAM

THE BRIDGES
AND ROADS
OF MITCHAM
ISBN 1 903899 03 6

Published by Merton Historical Society – September 2000

Further information on Merton Historical Society can be obtained from
the Society’s website at www.mertonhistoricalsociety.org.uk , or from
Merton Library & Heritage Service, Merton Civic Centre, London Road,
Morden, Surrey. SM4 5DX

MERTON HISTORICAL SOCIETY 2000

Mitcham in 1823 – detail from the Greenwoods’ map of Surrey

Mitcham in 1823 – detail from the Greenwoods’ map of Surrey
2

Samson’s horse buses 41-2
‘Spring-heeled Jack’ 49
Stage coaches – era of 38-41
Stane Street 4, 7

surface exposed 7
Statute of Bridges 9
Streatham Road 11
Streatham Road – repair 22-3
Surveyors of Highways

first appointed 21

in Mitcham 25
Sutton Road – impassable 24

Terrier’s Bridge 10-11
Terrier’s Wood Bridge 11
Traffic – increase in during the 17th century 22
Turnpikes 27-37, 39

18th-century beginnings 27-8

end 36

gates 27, 34-7, 45

Surrey and Sussex Turnpike 33

through Mitcham 35, 45

tolls 36, 45

Wandle Trail 19
Watering the roads 44
War-time – Mitcham bridge fortified 16

-Bailey bridge 19
West Field of Mitcham 19
Woode, Thomas – notice served on 8
Wylford/Wilford(e) family
bequest 20
involved in road repairs 20
James 20
John 20
Robert 20

Merton Bridge
in decay
Roman material in

Milestones

Mitcham bridge
built of brick
disrepair
war-time defences

Parishes and road maintenance
criticism by James Malcolm

Phipps Bridge
Close
housing estate
the bridge

Pump at Figges Marsh
Pypesbridge, Pyppisbrigg
Pyke, John – local farmer

Railways
Ravensbury bridge
Ravensbury Lane – closure
Road maintenance
Roads – origins
Roe, Sir Thomas
Roe Bridge

in disrepair
rebuilt

Samson,
Fred – veterinarian
Phil – cab proprietor
Philip – coach proprietor
Walter – ‘bus driver

7-10
8-9
7

7-8
8
19
8, 19
8
33-4, 35, 45

16
16
16

21-6
23-4
18-19
19
18
18-19
48
18
12

40, 41, 42
17-18
17
20-6, 43-4
4-5, 11
12
11-14
14
14

41
41
41-2
41

CONTENTS

FOREWORD…………………………………………………………………. 4
I THE BRIDGES …………………………………………………………. 7

1. MERTON BRIDGE …………………………………………………. 7
2. TERRIER’S BRIDGE, COLLIERS WOOD. …………… 10
3. ROE BRIDGE………………………………………………………….11
4. MITCHAM BRIDGE……………………………………………… 15
5. RAVENSBURY BRIDGE……………………………………….. 17
6. PHIPPS BRIDGE …………………………………………………… 18
II -THE HIGHWAYS…………………………………………………. 20

1. MAINTENANCE OF THE PARISH ROADS ………… 20
2. THE TURNPIKES …………………………………………………. 27
III -ROMANCE AND NOSTALGIA ………………………….. 38

1. THE ERA OF THE STAGE COACH …………………… 38
2. IN RETROSPECT………………………………………………….. 42
NOTES AND REFERENCES………………………………………. 51

INDEX ………………………………………………………………………… 56

Cover illustration: Coach and horses passing The Canons and Park Place
(detail from an early 19th-century print)

FOREWORD

From the time small groups of mesolithic hunter-gatherers first made
their way along the Wandle valley, tracks have existed through what,
centuries later, was to become the parish and borough of Mitcham.
Proliferating as settlements developed, these footpaths and bridleways
would certainly have existed long before the Roman occupation. It is
impossible to identify them today with any certainty, but one can be
sure that much of this network of ancient tracks continued in use
throughout the Middle Ages and beyond.

Whereas local roads met local needs, long-distance travel called for
innovation by the State, and two trunk routes passing close to Mitcham
town centre owe their existence to the military engineers of Imperial
Rome. Stane Street, which was constructed late in the 1st century AD
to link London with Chichester, remains a major highway. With minimal
diversion it still carries traffic from the capital through the former
villages of Clapham and Tooting to Colliers Wood and Merton. Beyond
Morden the old road survives beneath long stretches of the A24 and
A29, an impressive and enduring tribute to the Roman surveyors,

Figges Marsh
circumvented 29-30
pond 32, 45
turnpike gate 35, 37, 45
Ford -over Graveney 11-12
over Wandle at Merton 7
” ” ” Mitcham 17
Gravel – dug for roads 32
Graveney – course of 10-12
Green, Thomas – parish surveyor of highways 25
Hadfields (Merton) Ltd – paint manufacturers 19
Harvey, Lt. Gen. Daniel 16
Hellier, Isaac – parish surveyor of highways 25
Highwaymen 49, 50
Highways Act 1555 21, 22, 24
legislation in the 18th & 19th centuries 22, 23, 26
Holden,
Amelia 40
George – coach proprietor 38
John 40
Samuel 40, 41
Thomas Henry 40
Holdens’ coaches 38-41
memories of 43
Horse buses 41-2
Legislation – reform in 19th century 26
London Road Mitcham – straightened 29
Lower Green Coach Office 40
Lovell, Sir Gregory – landowner 18-19
Merchant Taylors Company 12, 14, 20
erection of Roe Bridge 12-14
stone in bridge parapet 12-14
57

INDEX

Hugh
John, and Ravensbury Bridge

Biggin and Tamworth – manor of
Biggin Farm
Blacklands – common fields
Bow Street Runners
Bridges,

Colliers Wood
Merton
Mitcham
Phipps, Pypesbrige
Ravensbury
Roe
Terriers
War-time Bailey bridge

Bridges – maintenance of

-provision of
Brighton coaches
Carew, Sir Francis
Carriers
Carriers’ wagons
Charringtons’ wagons
Closure of Ravensbury Lane
Coaching inns in Mitcham
Cobbett, William – writer
Colliers Wood bridge – out of repair
Cutting, Dick – water cart man

Eloy, Peter de St – turnpike commissioner
Epsom
race traffic

24
22, 36, 48-9

17
17

19, 20
12, 29
19
49

9-11
7-10
15-16
18-19
17-18
11-14
10-11
19
9-10, 15
9, 15, 17
38-40

11, 12, 22
22, 48
22, 47
48
17
38-40, 47
24, 28, 39
10
44

28
28
44-7

carrying the modern traveller into the hinterland of Surrey and West
Sussex. Through Streatham the second Roman road, leading to the
iron works in the Weald, continued over the intervening centuries to
link London with the emerging market town of Croydon, and here again,
much of the road still endures, albeit in a modern guise.

This study is not concerned with the Roman roads, however, but seeks
rather to examine what we know about the roads and bridges in Mitcham
whilst it was still a village and, in particular, how the parish endeavoured
to grapple with the problems of their maintenance until the close of the
19th century.

E.N.Montague

Sutton
Summer 2000

London Road (Whitford Lane) looking north from Lower Green towards the
Upper Green, c.1893 – Gravelled roads like these could become extremely
dusty in dry weather.

Colliers Wood High Street before the advent of the tramway
(Postcard, c.1900)

8 Pigot & Co.’s Directory for 1839 does, however, note that
“Trains, on the London and Southampton Railway, pass through
Wimbledon station almost hourly during the day.”

9 The late H. Siviour, of Edgehill Road, Mitcham, in a personal note
(1990).

10 Surrey History Centre. Particulars of the Sale of the Estate of the late
James Bridger 2327/1

2. IN RETROSPECT
1 Tooting Library. “Tooting’s Village Days (1824-1836) The Stage
Coaches” – Newspaper cutting in scrapbook.

2 Merton Local Studies Centre. Tom Francis’s lecture notes. p. 41, note
96

3 Merton Local Studies Centre. Tom Francis Scrapbook. Cutting “The
Coloured Past” (Interview with George Sheppard c.1930)

4 Merton Local Studies Centre.
Mitcham Advertiser 11th November 1909. Article ‘Life and Times of
George Pitt – one of Mitcham’s best known residents in the 19th century’,
being extracts from an address given by his son, John Marsh Pitt.

5 Merton Local Studies Centre. Tom Francis’s lecture notes.

6 Drewett J. D., ‘Memories of Mitcham’ in Old Mitcham II (1926) Gen.

Edit. Bidder H. F. 5

7 Reproduced in Searle M., Turnpikes and Tollbars I (1930) 190

8 Chamberlain W. H., Reminiscences of Old Merton (1925) 6

9 “Robert L. Charrington, Miller, Lower Mitcham” is listed in Pigot’s

Directory of Surrey (1839)

10 Robson’s Commercial Directory of the Seven Counties (1839)

11 Smith R.P., A History of Sutton (1960)

12 Manning O. and Bray W., History of Surrey II (1809) 495

13 Chamberlain W. H., op. cit., (1925) 6

14 Information from ex-Sgt Bernard Brown of the Metropolitan Police

History Society, in a pers. comm., Nov. 1998.

15 Bartley E.M., ‘Rural Mitcham. Recollections of an Old Resident’ in
Old Mitcham II (1926) 35

10 Smith R.P., A History of Sutton (1970) 28

12 Lambeth Archives (Minet Library). Scale 1 in. to 1 ml. Mitcham section
on pp 34/5

13 Merton Local Studies Centre. The map cites as its authority 13 & 14
Victoria c.lxxxv

14 Smith, R.P., ibid., 44 and Recording Britain I (1946) 112

“The house dated from 1758 (a weathervane on an adjacent building
was dated 1755)”
Merton Local Studies Centre. Notes by Hardy R.C., d/d August 1951

L2(647)MIT
The site of the old toll house was later occupied by The Rose public
house. This was demolished in 1983 to provide a site for a new Co

operative Society Supermarket built between 1986 and 1988.

15 28 Geo.II c.75

16 Manning O. and Bray, W., History of Surrey (III) 1814 App. liv

17 Searle M., Turnpikes and Tollbars (1930) II 697

18 Smith R. P., ibid. 33.

III -ROMANCE AND NOSTALGIA

1. THE ERA OF THE STAGE COACH
1 Surrey History Centre. Mitcham Land Tax records.
2 Now No 348 London Road
3 Edwards J., Companion from London to Brighthelmston (1789) Pt II

4 Harper C. G., The Brighton Road (1892)

5 Cobbett W., Rural Rides (1830)

6 Hassell J., Picturesque Rides and Walks I (1817) 116.
He mentions specifically the Buck’s Head, King’s Arms, Swan and
The King’s Head

7 T. and S. Holden of Lower Mitcham, coach proprietors, are listed in
Robson’s Commercial Directory of the Seven Counties (1839)

I THE BRIDGES

1. MERTON BRIDGE
The need for a bridge over the Wandle at Merton must have been
recognised at a very early period. Evidence suggests there was a ford
here during the Roman period, with perhaps a footbridge to one side,
but the date when the first road bridge was constructed is lost in antiquity.
In 1817 Hughson1 commented that “the bridge over the river is
remarkable for its arch, which is turned with tiles, instead of brick, or
stone ….” His description of the voussoirs as “tiles” sounds very much
as though the arch was built of thin Roman bricks, a conjecture supported
by the observations of Robert Masters Chart, a local architect and
surveyor, who recalled that when old Merton bridge was rebuilt in the
late 19th century “Roman bricks” were found incorporated within its
fabric.2 It would be unwise, however, to assume the bridge itself was
Roman in origin, and the bricks could well have been salvaged from a
site nearby.

Proof that Stane Street did, in fact, originally continue the line perpetuated
by today’s High Street Colliers Wood, and crossed the Wandle to the
south of today’s Merton bridge, was produced by the Museum of London
Archaeology Service during excavations in October 1997. Here, opposite
The Royal Six Bells, an impressive section of flint metalling, some six
metres wide with a ditch on one side, was exposed at a depth of roughly
two metres below modern ground level.3 It led towards an ancient course
of the Wandle, but unfortunately it was not feasible to extend the
excavations to expose the old waterchannel, so the precise position of
the ford remains conjectural. There is a strong possibility that this may
have been the “Bradenforde” or broad ford, referred to in a charter of
967 defining the bounds of the royal estate at Merton granted by King
Edgar to his trusted ealdorman Ælfheah.4

It seems likely that the first road bridge over the Wandle at this point
was erected early in the 12th century, when Merton priory was under
construction on the west bank of the river. The great church of the
priory was actually sited over the line of the Roman road, probably since
this provided solid foundations, and visitors to the priory would have
followed a new road skirting the precinct wall to the north, entering via

an impressive gatehouse that fronted what is now Merton High Street.
The point at which this road diverged from the line of the Roman road
can still be detected, for the A24 beyond Colliers Wood station bears
markedly to the right as one approaches the river, and continues thereafter
in a more westerly direction. The actual gatehouse of the priory stood
just to the west of where today Mill Road joins the High Street.
5 Roman building materials were commonly re-used in the
past, and it is therefore quite conceivable that bricks and tiles salvaged
during the 12th century from what remained of a nearby Roman structure
were utilised in the construction of the bridge.

That there was definitely a bridge over the Wandle at Merton in the
mid-16th century is confirmed by the entry in the minutes of the Kent
and Surrey Sewer Commission for 1569 recording that Thomas Woode
had been ordered to

“cut vppe & convyghe oute of the ryuer there ij wyllowes
growynge in hys meadowe wyche butteth yppone the brydge
called Martone Brydge …”6

Three years later the minutes noted that

“… the bridge called Merton bridge is very greatly in decay by
whom it ought to be repaired we know not.”7

During the Middle Ages it was not unusual for the administrators of a
great monastic house to take it upon themselves to maintain river
crossings and to repair bridges. Although it would have been in the
priory’s interest, we have no evidence that the prior and convent at
Merton accepted responsibility for the bridge over the Wandle, but it
may be significant that within 30 years of the Dissolution and the
dispersal of the priory’s estates amongst private secular owners, Merton
bridge should be suffering from neglect. It is not unexpected, therefore,
to discover the Sewer Commissioners experiencing difficulty in finding
anyone responsible for its repair.

II – THE HIGHWAYS

1. MAINTENANCE OF THE PARISH ROADS
1 Brown, John W., Roe Bridge Mitcham Lane (1993)

2 Surrey History Centre. Copy translation of grant of land in Mitcham
by Henry VIII to Robert “Wyleforde”, 19 May 1544. 599/219 a,b
Manning O. and Bray W., History of Surrey (1809) 498

3 Surrey Archaeological Collections LIX (1962) 6

4 Malcolm, J., Compendium of Modern Husbandry III (1805) 289-90

5 Michell R., The Carews of Beddington (1981) 52

6 Surrey Record Society XXXVI (1935) 304 (Quarter Sessions Records)

7 Malcolm, ibid. 311

8 Malcolm, ibid. 316

9 Greenwood, C. and J., Surrey Described (1823) 182, and
Harper C. G., The Brighton Road (1892), drawing on Manning and
Bray III (1814) Appendix L.

10 Cobbett, W., Rural Rides (1830)

2. THE TURNPIKES
1 Searle, M., Turnpikes and Tollbars (1930) I
2 Manning O., and Bray W., The History of Surrey III (1814) Appendix

L. quoting 8 William III c.15
3 Harper, C. G., The Brighton Road: The Classic Highway to the South
(1892)

4 Harper, C.G. quoting 28 Geo. II c.28

5 8 Geo.II c.14

6 28 Geo. II c.57

7 Malcolm, J., Compendium of Modern Husbandry III (1805) 286-7

8 42 Geo.III c.76
58 Geo.III c.76

9 28 Geo.II c.57
20 Geo.III c.100
41 Geo.III c.9
55 Geo.III c.4

3. 3.
13 Hobson J. M., The Book of the Wandle (1924) 96

14 Hughes A., ‘The Manor of Tooting Bec and its Reputed Priory’ Surrey
Archaeological Collections LIX (1962) 6

15 He was, for instance, instrumental in securing the enclosure of part of
Moorfields for use as a burial ground for the poor of London.
Brown J. W., Roe Bridge, Mitcham Lane (1993)

16 Graham Gower, of the Streatham Society, in a personal communication.
quoting (with a note of caution since the writing on the 17th century
document is difficult to decipher) London Metropolitan Archives M95/
BEC/22/29.

4. MITCHAM BRIDGE
17 Croydon Local Studies Library. William Marr’s map dated 1685.
“Mitcham Bridge” is clearly marked.

18 Surrey History Centre. Surrey Quarter Sessions records

19 Manning O. and Bray W., History of Surrey III (1814) xxxvii

20 Edwards J., Companion from London to Brighthelmston (c.1789) Pt II,
18

5. RAVENSBURY BRIDGE
21 Surrey History Centre. Mitcham poor rate books.

6. PHIPPS BRIDGE
22 “Totinge cum Pypesbrige” – Valor Ecclesiasticus, Royal Commission
(1834) ii 48.

23 London County Council, The Court Minutes of the Surrey and Kent
Sewer Commission I (1909) 102

24 Jowett E. M., A History of Merton and Morden (1951) 76

25 Transcription by Mr Turner, former librarian-in-charge at Mitcham, from
a collection of deeds relating to Mitcham now held by Surrey History
Centre. Supplied in a personal communication.

The provision of bridges, and arrangements to secure their proper
maintainenance thereafter, had been a source of constant concern to the
authorities throughout the Middle Ages. In some instances special
provisions were made, for instance by a trust or the setting aside of funds
by a guild or a charity. Many bridges were endowed in this way, but in
the case of others it was no easy matter to establish liability for repair.
By their nature, bridges tended to straddle town or parish boundaries,
and although responsibility might be apportioned, it was quite another
thing to secure the willing co-operation of reluctant local officials, who
had either to find the labour and materials, or to meet the cost. The
Statute of Bridges of 1531 was an early attempt at legislation to resolve
this difficulty. In effect, it made the county, through the justices of the
peace, generally responsible for bridge maintenance unless it could be
shown that some other body was liable at law, or that by custom the task
had fallen on a particular hundred or township. Even so, the vestries and
town councils often shirked their responsibilities, and county expenditure
on bridge maintenance (recoverable by a rate on property) rose steadily.

The question of responsibility for Merton bridge was obviously not
resolved satisfactorily, for in 1578 the Commissioners’ clerk again
recorded

“We presente a bridge called Martyn bridge in the parishes of
Mytcham Martyn and Wymbleton in the Countye of Surreye to be
in great decaye and verye needfull to be newe repayred and
amended …”8

With three parishes involved, and given the usual difficulty in securing
the agreement of even one parish to accept a degree of liability, we can
assume the works carried out were minimal, for within 50 years the bridge
again needed attention. This time a more permanent solution was adopted
for, according to Hassell, in 1633 the bridge was rebuilt.9 The single-
span structure was too narrow to permit more than one vehicle to cross at
a time, however, and for greater safety and convenience a separate
pedestrian footbridge with hand rails was later constructed at the side.
This remained the situation until the close of the 19th century, when both
road and footbridge were demolished, and the present bridge was built in
their place.

In an effort to curb the increasing outlay by counties on bridge repair
an Act of 1739 sought to confine justices’ expenditure to the
maintenance of bridges that had already been the subject of legal
proceedings. Thus, as the 18th century progressed, it became common
practice for the justices to prepare a report (a “presentment”) formally
indicting a person or group of persons, such as the inhabitants of a
village, for failing to maintain a bridge. On the complaint being proved,
the case would be adjourned to allow the bridge to be repaired in
default by the county. The difficulty being thus resolved, no further
action would be taken.
In an effort to curb the increasing outlay by counties on bridge repair
an Act of 1739 sought to confine justices’ expenditure to the
maintenance of bridges that had already been the subject of legal
proceedings. Thus, as the 18th century progressed, it became common
practice for the justices to prepare a report (a “presentment”) formally
indicting a person or group of persons, such as the inhabitants of a
village, for failing to maintain a bridge. On the complaint being proved,
the case would be adjourned to allow the bridge to be repaired in
default by the county. The difficulty being thus resolved, no further
action would be taken.

The growth in county expenditure was not halted by such measures,
and by the end of the 18th century it was generally accepted that the
repair of bridges which benefited the county as a whole should be the
liability of the county.

2. TERRIER’S BRIDGE, COLLIERS WOOD.
It is not altogether surprising, in view of the neglect suffered by Merton
bridge, that it should have become necessary to invoke the procedure
of indictment to secure the repair of another, smaller, bridge at Colliers
Wood, in this case carrying the main road over the river Graveney.
For many years this tributary of the Wandle had flowed in an open
ditch along the southern side of Colliers Wood High Street. Opposite
Byegrove Road it disappeared into a culvert beneath the highway, to
became visible again in the grounds of Byegrove Cottage (now the
site of a block of flats). From here the Graveney continued northwards
to join the main river near Summerstown.

At the Mitcham vestry meeting on 14th August 177411 the clerk
reported receipt of formal notice from the commissioners of the Epsom
turnpike that “Colliers Wood Bridge” was out of repair. The work
required threatened to involve the parish in heavy expense, to be met
out of the highway rate. Accordingly the customary procedure was
adopted, Mitcham vestry resolving that the turnpike trust might indict
the parish if it thought proper. There is no further mention of the
subject in the vestry minutes, and the bridge was presumably repaired
on the justices’ instructions and at the cost of the county.

NOTES AND REFERENCES

I THE BRIDGES

1. MERTON BRIDGE
1 Hughson D., Walks Through London I (1817) 353
Hassell J., Picturesque Rides and Walks I (1817) 121 also observed
that the under-arch was of tile, not brick.

2 Chart R.M. architect and surveyor, of Chart, Son and Reading, Mitcham,
quoted by Bidder H.F., in footnote to “Some New Material for the
Determination of the Course of Stane Street” Surrey Archaeological
Collections XLII (1934) 17

3 Museum of London Archaeology Service:Land Bordered by High Street
Colliers Wood, Christchurch Road and The Pickle. A Post-Excavation
Assessment. (March 1998) The road probably had a ditch on the
northern side as well as the southern, but this was not exposed during

the excavations.

4 Jowett E. M., A History of Merton and Morden (1951) 17-18

5 McCracken J.S., in a personal communication. Also Bruce P. and

Mason S., Merton Priory (1993) 3
6 London County Council Court Minutes of the Surrey and Kent Sewer

Commission I (1909) 35

7 Ibid., 102

8 Ibid., 311

9 Hassell J., Picturesque Rides and Walks I (1817) 121, and also
Greenwood C. and J., Surrey Described (1823) 182

10 Webb S. and B., The Story of the King’s Highway (1963)

2. TERRIER’S BRIDGE, COLLIERS WOOD
11 Merton Local Studies Centre. Mitcham Vestry Minutes.
12 The name is occasionally used in reference to Merton Bridge (eg Bidder

H.F., in Surrey Archaeological Collections XLII 17) but this seems to
be in error.
51

Emma Bartley, in her memories of old Mitcham, recounted the only
tale of highwaymen to have been passed down. She had been born in
1837, and was therefore repeating a story she had heard as a child:

A “well-known resident in those old days in the beginning of the
last century was Mr Swain, a medical practioner. At night he
rode on horseback, as was the universal custom at that time.
One night he was stopped by highwaymen, who accosted him in
their usual manner. “Your money or your life!” He begged they
would not detain him, as he was only a doctor on his way to see
a patient who was very seriously ill, and delay might be
dangerous. Hearing this, they politely apologised, saying had
they known he was a doctor, they would not have interfered with
him.”15

How true Miss Bartley’s story was we have no means of telling, but
her picture of the courteous ruffians of Mitcham – veritable ‘gentlemen
of the road’ -is probably as good a point as any at which to draw this
account to a close.

The bridge opposite Byegrove Road is shown as “Terier’s Wood
Bridge” by Rocque in the 1740s, and as “Terrier’s Bridge” on the first
edition OS map of 1816.12 “Terrier’s” seems likely to have evolved as
a corruption of Collier’s, but in the 19th century the name was
commonly believed to have arisen from the alleged popularity of the
bridge in times gone by as a meeting place for villagers at the start of a
day’s rat or otter-hunting with their dogs.

Apart from a short length north of Robinson Road, the Graveney
alongside the High Street ceased to be visible sometime early in the
19th century, when it was banished underground to become part of the
surface water sewerage system. Here and there a manhole cover marks
its course until Byegrove Road is reached.

3. ROE BRIDGE
The river Graveney, its name allegedly a back-projection from the
manor of Tooting Graveney through which it flowed on its way to join
the Wandle below Colliers Wood, has served as a boundary between
Mitcham and Streatham for a thousand years or more. It provided a
convenient line of demarcation between the ecclesiastical parishes when
they came into existence in the early Middle Ages, and still defines the
boundary between the London Boroughs of Merton and Wandsworth.

Mitcham’s Streatham Road, known until the end of the 19th century as
Streatham Lane, led from one Saxon village to another and undoubtedly
had its origins in a track or bridleway of considerable antiquity. The
Roman road south from London passed through Streatham, and for
centuries the traveller making for Mitcham would have been obliged
to cross the Graveney by a ford which, unless it was paved, would
have became very muddy and even dangerous during bad weather. The
approaches to the river could also become hazardous, as can be judged
from a minute of the Sewer Commissioners in 1572, which required
“Francis Carew Esquier” to

“… cope and make higher than now is to ye quantity of one fote
his banke againste the river of Biggre (Graveney) in the parish
of Micham … with good faste and sounde earthe as welle for the
kepinge in of the water as for the tramplinge of horsemen with

treadinge it downe although it was latelye done conteninge by
estimacion iiij roddes.”
treadinge it downe although it was latelye done conteninge by
estimacion iiij roddes.”

Sir Francis Carew was a major landowner in Mitcham, with property
which extended northwards as far as the Graveney (“the river of Biggre”,
or Biggin). The damaged bank seems likely to have been immediately
upstream from the Streatham Lane ford, since in the 1570s the land
below the crossing was in the possession of John Pyke, who held Biggin
Farm as a leasehold tenant of Henry Whitney, serjeant of Sir Thomas
Bromley, the Lord Chancellor.

Local tradition maintains that the first bridge to be built over the
Graveney at this point was erected by the Worshipful Company of
Merchant Taylors, after one Thomas Roe had narrowly escaped
drowning when thrown by his horse whilst crossing the river.14
Although it appears impossible to confirm this account from the
Merchant Taylors’ records, research in 1992 by John Brown of the
Streatham Society showed that Thomas Roe, who in later life received
a knighthood at the hand of Elizabeth I, was indeed a member of the
Merchant Taylors Company, of which he became Master in 1553. In
1560 Roe was appointed Sheriff of London, and in 1568 was elected
Lord Mayor. Whether or not Sir Thomas was responsible for having
the bridge constructed we shall probably never discover, but he was
known for good works in his lifetime. He is still remembered in the
City for his benevolence, and when he died in 1570 Sir Thomas left
money towards the support of poor members of the Merchant Taylors
Company, as well as members of the Clothworkers, Armourers,
Carpenters, Tilers and Plasterers Companies.15

It is not until the reign of Charles I that we have the first mention of an
actual bridge over the Graveney at this point, records of the manor of
Tooting Bec containing an entry of about 1647 which appears to refer
to Roe bridge.16 During the Commonwealth a new bridge was built,
presumably to replace the older structure which had then fallen into
decay.

Today, set in the northern parapet of the bridge, a block of Portland
stone is visible, on which are carved the arms of the Company with the
date 1652 and the words of a now barely legible inscription recording

fairs in Surrey. Often a fine large drove of cows would halt on the
Common to be milked, the milk being sold to residents at 2d. a quart.”6
North-east Surrey was then still mainly rural, and herds of animals in
the care of drovers were a common sight on the roads. There were also
many local livestock markets, of which Ewell fair was an example.
Here, in the 1830s, something in the order of 30,000 sheep from the
North Downs changed hands, many of them destined to pass through
Mitcham en route to Smithfield.11

Some of the dangers of travel on the roads in the mid-19th century, real
or imagined, have come down to us in village tradition. Streatham
Lane was narrow and dark, bordered by enormous elms, and village
children used to scare themselves with stories of ‘Spring-heeled Jack’,
who was reputed to spring out on the unsuspecting traveller, but there
seems to be no corroboration of their tales in official records. Merton
Lane (Western Road) was dangerous for another reason. It, too, was
narrow and unlit, as were all the village roads until the coming of gas
in the second half of the l9th century. There was also the additional
hazard of a deep ditch along one side, into which it was all too easy for
the unwary to drive on a dark night. Even so, conditions had improved
since the middle of the 18th century when the run of water from the
Common had at times turned the lane into a ‘wash-way’. By 1809 this
had been “confined in a channel and partly covered over”.12

The original Millers Mead cottages in Colliers Wood High Street
(backing onto Wandle Park) dated from the mid-18th century, and until
demolished in the early 1980s provided a visual link with the days of
highwaymen. In hisReminiscences of Old Merton Chamberlain recalled
that “prior to the occupation of the end cottage by old Mr Legg” (i.e.
before 1831, when Legg, a copper roller from Fareham, had bought the
property) “it was said to have been the stables and quarters of the ‘Bow
Street Runners’, whose duty it was (before the passing of the Police
Act) to track down highwaymen and footpads infesting the high-roads
at this time”.13 This use of the building would apparently date from
1805, when police records show that a detachment of the Bow Street
Horse Patrols (to give them their official name) was established at
Merton. They were absorbed into the Metropolitan Police in 1839.14

A picturesque sight in the 1840s and 1850s was the daily passage
through the village of Robert Charrington’s wagons on their way to
and from the Wandle flour mills.
A picturesque sight in the 1840s and 1850s was the daily passage
through the village of Robert Charrington’s wagons on their way to
and from the Wandle flour mills. These were real old covered wagons
with a circular tilt or awning, each drawn by four fine Flemish horses
and in the charge of wagoners wearing smocks and broad-brimmed
hats, and carrying long whips.6 The local carriers’ wagons also travelled
daily to London and back. Four operated from Mitcham in the 1840s John
Baker of Whitford Lane, John Edwins and Edmund Goodman
from Lower Mitcham, and James Townsend from Figges Marsh.10 The
Swan was a favoured stopping-place for the carriers, as well as some
of the coaches and the racegoers. For the latter the nearby lavender
and herbal distillery of Potter and Moore provided a fascinating
diversion whilst the horses were watered before the journey was
resumed.

The Swan Inn, Mitcham (copy of postcard c.1910)

“We always knew of the approach of Croydon Fair time – October
2nd” said Drewett. “Large droves of all kinds of cattle, horses, geese,
ducks, goats, ponies, passed through Mitcham to this, one of the largest

The Merchant Taylors’ stone, Roe bridge (c.1970)

that “This bridge was made at the cost of the Worshipful Company of
Merchant Taylors”. This seems proof enough of the Company’s
involvement but, once again, the records are not particularly helpful,
and contain no reference to a specific payment for the building of the
bridge at this time. It could well be, however, that part of the Wylford
bequest, to which we will return later, was used for this purpose, which
would account for the Merchant Taylors’ arms and the inscription
appearing on the bridge.

“This Bridge Built by the Company Named on the opposite stone
was taken down Rebuilt & Enlarged in 1772 By the Munificence
of the Gentry In the Neighbouring Parishes in Concurrence with
the said Company.”

Following receipt of complaint that the 18th-century bridge was falling
into disrepair, it was reconstructed by the London County Council in
1906 and the old Merchant Taylors’ stone was reset in the northern
parapet. Further reconstruction took place in 1911 when the roadway
was widened by the London County Council and Surrey County Council
acting jointly. This work was commemorated by a small stone tablet
inscribed with the words “Rebuilt 1911”, and inserted into the northern
parapet beneath the Merchant Taylors’ stone. A bronze boundary plaque
in the form of a shield, embossed “Roe Bridge LCC/SCC,” was also
fixed on the southern parapet.

In 1992 the bridge was again rebuilt, this time by the London Borough
of Wandsworth. The stone bearing the Merchant Taylors’ arms was
carefully set aside and refixed during the course of work, and a new
commemorative plate was unveiled with due ceremony on 10th November
1992 by Cllr Peter Donoghue, the Deputy Mayor of Wandsworth, and
John R. Perring, Past Master of the Merchant Taylors Company.

walking pace. The cavalcade included scores of four-in-hands, and
every conceivable variety of vehicle from coaches, landaus, and
broughams to the more plebeian gigs and humble donkey carts. Always
of interest were the private carriages bearing the coats of arms of the
nobility on their doors, and driven by liveried servants resplendent in
gold braid and buttons. Outshining all were the beautiful dresses and
elaborate hats worn by the society ladies, who were accompanied by
immaculately dressed gentlemen. At this time royalty had no alternative
but to travel by road with everyone else, and for years it was the custom
of the future Edward VII, then Prince of Wales, to stop briefly at The
King’s Head. Whilst the Prince and the royal party retired to the “oak
room”, now the longroom or restaurant, fresh horses were harnessed to
the coaches and the others led away to rest in stables in the inn yard. It
is claimed that on such an occasion a Lady Morton, said to have been
one of the Prince’s favourites, was abused by a lavender seller. His
Royal Highness was highly offended, and, according to local tradition,
thereafter transferred his patronage to The Six Bells at Colliers Wood.

Situated as it was on the Tooting to Epsom turnpike, The Six Bells at
Colliers Wood was a regular port of call for wagoners on their way to
and from the capital, and Chamberlain recalled how in the mid-19th
century it was the meeting place for all the local and district carriers.8
Here loads were exchanged, and other business transacted, such as the
buying and selling of goods and small livestock at a nominal fee for
people living in outlying districts, who found it inconvenient to make
the journey into town. These fore-runners of the large road haulage
undertakings today came into Merton from towns as far distant as
Guildford and Leatherhead, a journey in those days of some five or six
hours. The inn derived its name from the ring of bells carried by the
lead horses of the wagon teams, distinctive to each carrier and giving
much appreciated forewarning of the approach of the great lumbering
vehicles along the narrow lanes. The inn was also well known to Derby
goers, and is said to owe its present name of The Royal Six Bells to the
brief patronage of the Prince of Wales. Here the Prince, who seems
often to have attracted a deal of animosity, is alleged to have been the
target of a well-directed bag of flour, and thereafter the royal party
elected to travel to and from Epsom by the new railway.

Figges Marsh Gate – Derby traffic, 1845 – Illustrated London News

Roe bridge and the river Graveney. (c.1970)

4. MITCHAM BRIDGE
From time immemorial travellers on the main road between Mitcham
and Sutton have been obliged to cross the river Wandle, which here
formed the ancient boundary between the parishes of Mitcham and
Morden and, until 1965, the southern boundary of the Borough of
Mitcham. Long before either of the two communities could afford the
luxury of a bridge, the crossing was effected by a ford, which a few
older residents can still faintly remember at the side of Mitcham Bridge.

If the bridge itself is noticed at all today by the passing motorist, it is as
a slightly inconvenient constriction in the otherwise wide road south
of the former Mitcham railway station. It would appear to be relatively
modern in construction, but a metal parish boundary marker in the
western parapet bearing the date 1882 suggests that at least part of the
structure is well past its centenary. A sound bridge was essential if

travellers on foot were to cross the Wandle dryshod, and we know that
by the time James II came to the throne, another Mitcham bridge spanned
the Wandle.
travellers on foot were to cross the Wandle dryshod, and we know that
by the time James II came to the throne, another Mitcham bridge spanned
the Wandle. This was, we can assume, intended primarily for
pedestrians, with wheeled traffic, and especially heavily laden wagons,
coaches, and pack animals being expected to use the adjacent ford.
Since expenditure on the bridge would have been a burden on the
highway rates, its maintenance was neglected and avoided by the parish
authorities if at all possible.

Thus in August 1725, when Mitcham vestry was concerned at the need
to secure repair of the bridge, it was minuted that Lt. Gen. Daniel Harvey,
one of the parish’s most influential residents, had undertaken to “use
his best endeavours” to ensure that the county accepted responsibility,
and that no charge should fall on the inhabitants of Mitcham.11

By 1759 the bridge had once again become so dilapidated that Mitcham
and Morden were formally “presented” to the magistrates of the county
for their failure to ensure it was in a satisfactory condition.18 At the
close of the year certificates of repair were filed when, we are told,
“their recognizances were respited sine die”, the procedure having
enabled the county officers to execute the necessary works in default
of the two parishes without establishing any commitment to subsequent
repair, as Manning and Bray saw fit to stress in their History of Surrey
in 1814.19 Local records do not indicate whether the old bridge was of
wood or of more durable material, but by 1789 the structure was
certainly of brick, a fact which sufficiently impressed Edwards, the
topographical writer, for him to comment on it in his guide for travellers
on the road to Brighton.20

Until the 1930s the ford at the side of the bridge remained accessible,
and was used by the drivers of horse-drawn vehicles wishing to water
their animals. When invasion threatened in 1940, the river crossing
became a potential barrier. The entrances to the ford were blocked
with barbed wire entanglements and strategically placed concrete cubes,
or ‘tank traps’, to hinder enemy vehicles seeking to circumvent the bridge,
which was to be defended by the army, reinforced by the local Home
Guard. Once the threat had passed, the defences were removed, but
the ford was never reopened.

The tollgates of course figured prominently in people’s memories. That
at Figges Marsh, near the entrance to Swains Lane, barred the way
from Upper Mitcham to both Colliers Wood and Tooting. “There could
be no furious driving in those days!” declared James Drewett, “The
toll had to be paid, (and) the ticket given, before the village road was
left behind.” The old tollgate keeper might be seen late at night, issuing
from his box, nightcap on head and with lantern held high, to answer
the summons of some belated, and perhaps incoherent, traveller wishing
to pass the toll bar.6 George Sheppard, recalling his childhood in the
1860s,3 remembered “a deep ditch and a pond on the Marsh side, and a
fence on the other side, so nobody could dodge the toll, though some of
the gay sparks with gigs tried to do so now and again.” The chaos and
annoyance the bar caused on race days is captured in a cartoon entitled
“Return from the Derby” which appeared in the Illustrated London
News of 3lst May 1845, and depicted a queue of irate and impatient
drivers of traps and other small horse-drawn vehicles waiting at a five
bar gate, adjoining which is a small wooden hut bearing the notice
“Figg’s Marsh Gate”.7 The early tollgate keepers were sometimes sworn
in as parish constables, and empowered to detain miscreants in the toll
house or local lock-up. The crush at Figges Marsh gate was often
more than the gatekeepers could manage, however, and police
reinforcements were necessary to preserve order.

Near the tollgate was the milestone, where Drewett remembered
standing in the 1860s to see the Prince of Wales, afterwards King
Edward VII, posting to the Derby, and recalled his father telling how in
the past he had been told to doff his cap and bend his knee as the Prince
Regent in his carriage and pair passed through Mitcham on the way to
Brighton, escorted by a troop of Horse Guards in full uniform.6

The annual Epsom race week created an eagerly awaited diversion for
the populace of Mitcham in the 19th century, and on Derby day, when
the main road right through the village was thronged with people,
schools were shut since it was impossible to rely on sufficient children
attending. Until the latter half of the century, there was no way of
reaching the Downs other than by road. The press of traffic at the
Figges Marsh and Rosehill tollgates caused traffic jams both morning
and evening which lasted for hours, with everything proceeding at a

so that for weeks the roads were pretty rough. Later, a large
roller was used, pulled by six horses. Later still, of course, came
the steam roller. Flints were left in heaps by the sides of the
roads where they were broken to the required size by
stonebreakers with long-handled hammers. Stone breaking was
one of the jobs imposed on able-bodied men who were given
lodging and feed in the workhouse. Mitchamers had to journey
to Mayday Road, Croydon, to do their stone-breaking after the
Mitcham workhouse on the Common closed down” (i.e. after
the reform of the Poor Law in 1834, and enforced amalgamation
of parishes into unions).
so that for weeks the roads were pretty rough. Later, a large
roller was used, pulled by six horses. Later still, of course, came
the steam roller. Flints were left in heaps by the sides of the
roads where they were broken to the required size by
stonebreakers with long-handled hammers. Stone breaking was
one of the jobs imposed on able-bodied men who were given
lodging and feed in the workhouse. Mitchamers had to journey
to Mayday Road, Croydon, to do their stone-breaking after the
Mitcham workhouse on the Common closed down” (i.e. after
the reform of the Poor Law in 1834, and enforced amalgamation
of parishes into unions).

Houses with a street frontage would become covered with dust in the
summer, whilst in winter the roads were extremely muddy. At the
southern end of Figges Marsh there stood a village pump, from which
in the 1860s old Dick Cutting, the village water-cart man, used to draw
water to lay the inches of dust that lay on the London Road, taking care
always to padlock the pump afterwards, for its misuse by boys could
turn the road into a bog.3 The rising cost of this service became a
political issue in 1881, and as a personal protest George Pitt, a local
philanthropist and self-confessed eccentric, is said to have had the
Mitcham roads watered for eight hours a day at his own expense.4
As the one-time proprietor of the “London House” drapery and general
stores in Whitford Lane where, following the custom of the day,
merchandise was festooned about the front of the building, Pitt was
well aware of the need to keep the dust down. The story is an amusing
one, but it seems likely that there must have been more to this seemingly
public-spirited gesture than is now apparent. On occasions the dusty
condition of the main road could certainly be turned to the shopkeepers’
advantage, and it is alleged that it was not unknown during Derby week
for the watering to be neglected by the parish officers. True or not,
London House did a roaring trade in ‘Derby veils’, sold to ladies on the
passing coaches to protect their fine hats from the dust raised by the
traffic on its way to the race meeting at Epsom.5 By 1910 Surrey County
Council had achieved surface tarring of more than half the county’s
main roads, and the nuisance was largely abated.

Fording the Wandle by Mitcham bridge (postcard c.1911)

5. RAVENSBURY BRIDGE
In 1753 Mitcham vestry, alert to the possibility of reducing rate-borne
expenditure on the maintenance of another Wandle bridge, was quick
to seize the opportunity of securing that the cost, both of providing a
new bridge and responsibility for its subsequent repair, should fall on a
wealthy resident. The vestry minutes record that in about 1753 John
Arbuthnot, the proprietor of “a most extensive manufactory” bleaching
calico on the banks of the river at Ravensbury, was living at Ravensbury
House.11 The rate books make it clear, from a doubling of the rateable
value, that within a short time of his obtaining tenure of the property,
Arbuthnot enlarged the house very considerably.21 At the same time
he obtained the consent of the vestry to a diversion of the old road to
Morden, which hitherto had passed close by the house, and to the
removal of the bridge crossing the river at this point. Obviously the
diversion was aimed at securing greater privacy for the occupants of
the house, and for his part Arbuthnot accepted responsibility for the
repair of the new bridge and road he constructed.

Sixty years later, when work became necessary to the bridge, the vestry
found itself in dispute with Colonel Hugh Arbuthnot, who had inherited
the estate. The vestry sought counsel’s opinion, asking if they had

power to enforce repair of the bridge by the colonel, and if not, whether
they would be entitled to “open up the ancient Highway leading close
by Ravensbury House”. If neither course were open to them, the vestry
asked if the parish could be held liable for the cost of repair of the new
bridge. William Draper Best, their counsel, in giving his opinion held
that as the landowner, Richard Gee Carew of Beddington, had not been
a party to the original agreement, the old road had not been closed
formally. It could therefore be repaired, and either the old or the new
bridge should be repaired by the county. On hearing this decision the
vestry, through their solicitor, informed the colonel that they hoped the
controversy could be settled without the vestry having to re-open the
old road, and that he would accept responsibility for repair of the new
highway. The outcome is not reported in the vestry minutes, but the
threat evidently had the desired effect, for the old road remains today
as a cul-de-sac at the side of Ravensbury Park, whilst the public road to
Morden continues to make a detour around John Arbuthnot’s former
bleaching grounds, finally crossing the Wandle by the bridge opposite
the Ravensbury mills.

The first known documentary evidence for a bridge over the Wandle at
this point, on the boundary between the ancient eccesiastical parishes
of Mitcham and Merton, is contained in the Valor Ecclesiasticus of
1535, where mention is made of “Pypesbrige”.22 Three years later, the
Ministers’ Accounts contain an entry for a close of eight acres (3.25ha)
“by Pyppisbrigg”. It is next referred to in the court minutes of the
Surrey and Kent Sewer Commission, who in 1572 ordered

“… Grigorye lovelle Esquier to cut vp a willow growing vpon
the stone walle at the bridge called puppes Bridge & there to

“Then followed the coaches; and Messrs Holden of Mitcham
were noted for sending some of the finest coaches and teams of
horses into London, and were well patronised. There was a seat
at the back of the first Mitcham coach, made of wicker, and
called the basket; and as that coach travelled slowly then, the
favourite question was: ‘If the coach went at nine, what time
went the basket?’

“The stables at the inns in the village were used for the horses
worked in the stage coaches which went to Brighton, Worthing
and other places, and the roads were quite lively with the
excitement caused when the coaches stopped to change horses,
and Tooting was the first stage from London. They generally
went down one day, and up the next; and when one, ‘The Item’,
went to Brighton and back in the day, it was considered a marvel
of fast travelling. Then sprung up a fancy for the one horse
chaise, and a good deal of rivalry was carried on as to who could
drive to London in the shortest time, or had the smartest ‘kit’ on
the road, and their owners delighted to drive their own cobs,
and outpace a neighbour if possible – a delight to everyone priding
himself on a good horse.

“Then the first omnibus, a three-horse one, was started, and in
time nothing else was left on the road but the ‘buses, much to
the indignation of the drivers of the coaches, who had great regard
for their own vehicles, and one of the coachmen, a Mr Elsey,
strongly demurred to drive an omnibus, thinking it infra dig to
descend to such degradation; but of course, he had to meet the
times, and like a man, did so. He had every element in him of a
stage coachman.”1

Before the advent of waterbound macadam and steamrollers the gravel
placed on the turnpikes and the parish roads was left to be ground in
by the wheels of the passing traffic. Recalling the period around 187080,
Tom Francis used to observe in his “Old Mitcham” lectures that

“… the roads were repaired by covering them with flints. These
were not rolled in, but were gradually worn down by the traffic,

his bedroom window so that he could see the coming and going of the
‘buses as he lay in bed. He died in 1890, at the age of 73, but for a few
years more the family business was continued by Walter and Frederick.
Stabling they had occupied at the rear of No. 1 Lower Green West was
auctioned following the death of James Bridger in 1888his bedroom window so that he could see the coming and going of the
‘buses as he lay in bed. He died in 1890, at the age of 73, but for a few
years more the family business was continued by Walter and Frederick.
Stabling they had occupied at the rear of No. 1 Lower Green West was
auctioned following the death of James Bridger in 1888 and became
the council’s highways department’s yard. The end of the Samsons’
business came finally early in the 20th century when, with the opening
of the new electric tramway between Tooting Junction and Croydon in
1906, and the extension of a branch as far as The King’s Head in 1910,
horse-drawn omnibuses could no longer compete. Frederick’s
veterinary practice survived for a time, but this too disappeared from
the Mitcham scene by the early 1920s.

2. IN RETROSPECT
It was not until 1855 that the Wimbledon to Croydon railway was
opened and the first steam trains stopped at Mitcham station. Thirteen
more years were to pass before, with the opening of Mitcham Junction
station, a direct line was available to London and the South Coast.
Until the advent of the railways the only means of transport to and
from the village was by horse, either ridden or drawing a vehicle. Those
who were fit but could not afford the fare had to go by ‘Shanks’s pony’.
The Queen’s highway provided the only route of communication with
the wide world beyond the parish boundaries, and it is therefore to be
expected that the romance of old roads and their bygone traffic should
figure prominently in the memories of residents recorded early this
century, when ‘Old Mitcham’ itself was fast disappearing.

Recalling the vehicles of the period 1824-1836, one old resident of
neighbouring Tooting said

“… in my memory the most primitive mode of conveyance
perhaps being the ‘go-cart’ which was entirely devoid of springs,
and as it was covered at the top, and had curtains at the side, it
bore more resemblance to a four-post bedstead than anything
else, and was as often called by that name as by its legitimate
one of ‘go cart’.

take vpp a shelfe against his ground lieng in the Rivor theare
conteining in length lj roddes …”23

The gentleman concerned was Sir Gregory Lovell, cofferer, i.e.
treasurer, to the household of Elizabeth I, who was then in possession
of an estate in Merton, and was resident with his family in part of the
former priory buildings.24

Whether or not the “stone walle” referred to by the Sewer Commission
was the precinct wall of Merton priory (sections of which still stand
near the river bank 100 metres or so downstream from Phipps bridge),
part of some ancient revetment of the river bank, or even the actual
abutment of the bridge itself, is not made clear in the minutes. We
have no record to show who erected the first bridge at this point, but it
would not be too fanciful to ascribe it to the priory, for construction of
walls enclosing the precincts sometime in the 12th or 13th century
would have obliged travellers following the course of the old Roman
Stane Street from London to make a detour, either to the north by way
of what is now Merton High Street, or to the south along a predecessor
of Liberty Avenue and Phipps Bridge Road. In the latter case the river
would certainly need to be crossed, either by a bridge or a ford.

Phipps bridge finds mention in the court rolls of the manor of Biggin
and Tamworth between 1606 and 1699, and a deed of 20th January
1612 records the sale by Sir Henry Burton of Carshalton to Thomas
Goldwyer of a plot of land called Pippes Bridge Close abutting on
Pippes Lane in Blacklands.25 (The Blacklands was the name commonly
applied to virtually the whole of the great open west field of the parish
of Mitcham, extending in an arc from the vicinity of Ravensbury Park
in the south to Western Road in the north.)

During World War II the bridge then existing was replaced by a
prefabricated ‘Bailey bridge’, sufficient to carry heavy motor vehicles
to and from the premises of Hadfields (Merton) Ltd, paint and varnish
manufacturers, on the west bank of the river. The firm of Hadfields
has now long gone, but the bridge remains, restricted to pedestrians
and cyclists only, connecting Phipps Bridge Road with the Wandle Trail,
a long distance public footpath following the river from its sources at
Waddon and Carshalton to the Thames at Wandsworth.

II -THE HIGHWAYS

II -THE HIGHWAYS
MAINTENANCE OF THE PARISH ROADS
To a limited extent during the Middle Ages highways outside towns
were maintained by the Church, but this ceased between 1534 and 1539
with the Dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII. Thereafter
responsibility was occasionally assumed by individuals or guilds, and
there were some notable and praiseworthy improvements carried out
voluntarily by local gentry at their own expense.

In Mitcham, for instance, we have the example of public spirit displayed
by two members of the Wylford (or Wyleforde), family, whose
connections with the parish went back to the 15th century. The first
was James Wylford, Master of the Worshipful Company of Merchant
Taylors in 1494, who is credited with having paid for the construction
of the road from Mitcham to Streatham.1 By the mid-16th century the
family was obviously well regarded by those in authority, and in 1544
his eldest son, Robert, was granted the lordship of the manor of Biggin
and Tamworth, and with it land in north Mitcham formerly held by
Merton priory.2 Another of James’s sons, John, who was Master of the
Company in 1542 and owned a house and land in Lower Mitcham,
followed the example set by his late father, and in his will dated 1550/
51 left rent charges of £13 a year to the Company in trust to be applied
to repairing the highways through Streatham and Mitcham to Carshalton
and Sutton.3 The money from the Wylford bequest was paid to the two
parishes every three years, and for over 300 years was expended in
procuring loads of stones to fill the larger holes, and faggots and sticks
to place over the deepest mud. Eventually the costs involved in
administering the trust became greater than the value of the bequest,
and it was decided, with the consent of the local authorities concerned,
that the payments should cease, and the trust be consolidated with the
other charities run by the Merchant Taylors’ Company.

Laudable as such individual gestures were, nationally such a haphazard
approach to the repair of the roads fell far short of what was needed.
Perhaps not unexpectedly, dissatisfaction with the condition of the main
highways became widespread, and Elizabeth I is reported to have

starting at 7 o’clock.8 Samuel Holden’s name appears regularly in
local directories until 1855, by which time the business had been
acquired by Philip Samson, a former coach driver. We have no idea
what happened to the Holden family; Samuel can only have been in
his forties at the time, but it may well be that, forseeing the changes
that were to come with the expansion of the railways, he astutely sold
out while the going was good.

By the 1850s the London Brighton and South Coast Railway and the
London and South Western Railway Companies were running regular
and fast services between London and the coast through Croydon and
Wimbledon respectively. Long distance coach travel was becoming
less popular, and Samson adapted his business to meet the needs of the
time, introducing a horse bus service from his office which aimed to
meet every train stopping at West Croydon station. Even this had to
compete with a local railway line, opened in 1855, which connected
the two main line stations via Mitcham. Despite the competition, Philip
Samson seems to have made a living, and with his three sons, Walter,
Frederick and Philip, became one of the ‘characters’ of Mitcham during
the latter half of the 19th century. ‘Phil’ was the landlord of The King’s
Head (now the Burn Bullock) and proprietor of the cab yard at the rear;
Walter drove the omnibus to and from London for many years, and
Fred, dubbed ‘Squeaker’ because of his high pitched voice, had a
veterinary practice, with premises at Fair Green. Fred had a large
paddock stretching from Montrose Gardens to Clarendon Grove where
he grazed sickly animals, and also a smaller paddock containing a 10
foot (3m) high mound in its centre, marked clearly on the 1897 OS
map. Here Fred would stand, whip and rein in hand, whilst horses
being exercised or broken-in trotted around him.9 At about the turn of
the century he had an old house overlooking the Green demolished to
provide a site for the red-brick Montrose House, which became his
residence. The gates to his yard, topped with the skull of a horse, were
at the rear. The house still stands at the corner of Montrose Gardens,
just visible behind the tobacconist’s shop and a restaurant which were
later built as extensions covering the front garden.

Coaches and horses had been Philip Samson’s life, and in his declining
years the old man arranged for a mirror to be fixed at an angle outside

ran down to Mitcham at 9, 10 and 11 a.m., returning at 6 and 7 in the
evening. The single fares charged were 2s. 6d. (12.5p) inside and 1s.6d.
outside which, being roughly equal to a day’s wage for a working man,
meant coach travel was a luxury, far beyond the reach of the great
majority of the ordinary people of Mitcham.
4 The early 1830s were the golden age of stage coaches,
with over 40 coaches running to and from London and Brighton daily.
On 2lst September 1841 the Brighton railway was opened, and with
this event the coaching era went into decline, and the colourful coaches
had completely vanished from all the Brighton roads by 1862.

John Holden, who we assume was George’s son, rented the house and
the stables and coach houses at the rear of The White Hart from 1800
until his death in 1819, and then tenure of the property passed to Thomas
Henry Holden (born c.1784) and another George.7 Samuel, the last of
the Holdens to run the business, and seemingly sole representative of
the fourth generation, was living at 4 Commonside West by 1841.
Thomas remained at the old family house next to The White Hart, but
ten years later he appears to have died or moved away, for the census
of 1851 records the occupant as Samuel, with his wife Amelia and 12year-
old son.

As we have already remarked, these were the great days of the stage
coach and horse-drawn transport generally. The railways were not yet
in serious competition on many routes, and the roads of the kingdom
were thronged with a multitude of vehicles of every description. The
custom of commuting to town was now well established, and the
Holdens’ coaches and horse omnibuses ran from their ‘Lower Green
Coach Office’ at half hourly intervals during the morning rush hours,

complained after a long coach journey that she was so bruised she
could scarcely sit down!

The urgent need for the better maintenance and improvement of the
roads throughout the kingdom prompted the Parliament of Mary I to
pass the Highways Act of 1555, which transferred responsibility for
road maintenance from the manors to the parishes, and obliged
parishioners to assist with the provision of carts and either four
(increased to six in 1691) days’ labour or ‘team duty’, annually between
Easter and Midsummer. This could be commuted by the payment of
an arbitrary composition or highways rate. The parishes discharged
their responsibility through two unpaid surveyors of highways, chosen
at the Easter vestry meeting to serve for one year. The powers with
which these officers were invested were considerable. Malcolm set
them out as they existed in the early 19th century:

“They can enter grounds already broken up, and they can break
up commons and wastes, and dig for gravel; they can employ
people to collect the stones that may be found on the arable part,
as well as on the lay part of a farm, provided the former is not in
corn; and these stones or flint they do carry away, only paying a
very small compensation for them, and in some parishes without
paying any thing at all; they can employ labourers, hire teams,
and demand a certain number of carts, waggons, horses, oxen
and men, on certain days in every year, most convenient to
themselves, from those that keep them; and from those that do
not keep any, they require a sum of money, which is levied by a
pound rate in lieu thereof. This is called statute duty. They
account for the disbursement of this money, and the application
of the whole of the duty to the vestry on the following Easter,
when the period of these officers’ duty ceases; but their accounts
are not finally settled until they have appeared before certain
magistrates to verify on oath to the truth and justice of them.”4

Should the vestry or its officers default in their obligations to maintain
the roads through the parish they risked censure by the magistrates of
the county, or even a reprimand from the Privy Council. Outlying
parts of a parish tended, by reason of their isolation, to be afforded a

low priority, and Sir Francis Carew, one of Elizabeth I’s justices of the
peace, was required by the Privy Council to see that the Streatham end
of Mitcham Lane was repaired “as it is impassable to the detriment of
the inhabitants of Beddington and Carshalton” (amongst other places)
“causing both they and the Queen’s messengers to go by other and
inconvenient routes”.
low priority, and Sir Francis Carew, one of Elizabeth I’s justices of the
peace, was required by the Privy Council to see that the Streatham end
of Mitcham Lane was repaired “as it is impassable to the detriment of
the inhabitants of Beddington and Carshalton” (amongst other places)
“causing both they and the Queen’s messengers to go by other and
inconvenient routes”. On another occasion, the justices at quarter
sessions in 1663 expressed concern at the disrepair of the road to
Beddington, and the dangerous condition of the Merton Road.6

Parish maintenance might in theory have been satisfactory for local
needs, but it was not suited for the care of trunk roads carrying long
distance traffic. Until the improvement of rivers and the construction
of the canals in the 18th century, followed by railways in the 19th, the
transport of heavy goods overland was performed by carriers and trains
of pack animals. Great hooded wagons, drawn by teams of up to eight
horses, moved slowly across the country at three miles per hour. The
requirements of urban butchers had to be met with meat on the hoof,
and the roads around London were thronged with droves of cattle, sheep
and swine wending their way slowly to the shambles at Smithfield and
elsewhere. Geese and ducks were also driven to market in huge flocks.
Many of the ‘green lanes’, or drove roads, used by the drovers were of
great antiquity. In the third quarter of the 18th century the movement
of livestock amounted to 100,000 cattle and three-quarters of a million
sheep annually, or 2,000 per day, their hooves churning the roads into
what one contemporary writer described as a “fantastic quagmire”.

Towards the end of the 17th century wheeled traffic increased, with
hackney carriages being first used in and around London in 1634. Post
chaises had appeared by 1664, and private carriages proliferated at
about the same time. When dry in summer the roads might be passable,
although often deeply rutted and potentially dangerous where
maintenance was neglected. In wet weather, however, coaches and
wagons could sink to their axles in mud. In the circumstances it is not
surprising that criticism mounted in the early 18th century, directed at
the parish authorities.

The great Highways Act of 1555 had been augmented from time to
time with other legislation, such as an Act, not repealed until 1767,

even to be prepared, if necessary, to assist with a push behind to aid the
jaded horses. Accidents permitting, and after numerous halts at
hostelries en route, the coach arrived at Brighton at 7 p.m. The next
two decades were to see this time reduced dramatically as the speed of
the coaches increased with improvements in gradients and in the road
surfaces.

The road through Mitcham and Sutton remained the principal route to
Brighton from London until the turnpike through the Merstham gap
provided an alternative route for coaches. Cobbett, writing in May
1823, described the development of what for him was the modern habit
of living well out of London and coming up to business from such
places as Brighton. He was particularly incensed at what he saw as a
waste of labour expended in lowering the road across Angel Hill to the
north of Sutton Green to “make pleasant and quick travelling for stock
jobbers”.5 In the 1820s, he tells us, no fewer than 20 coaches a day
were leaving Brighton for London; “a coach which leaves not very
early in the morning reaches London by noon, and starting to go back
in 2½ hours afterwards reaches Brighton not very late at night”. Three
or four different roads were at this time competing for custom, but
many of the coaches must still have passed through Mitcham. Pigot’s
Directory for 1826-7 stated that “Coaches to London pass through
Mitcham every morning at eight, half-past eight, nine and a quarter
before ten; and afternoon at quarter past two, quarter past four and
six.” Old-established wayside inns like The King’s Head and The White
Hart (both the latter had been modernised in the mid-18th century)
vied with each other to attract the coach traveller in search of rest and
refreshment, and new inns, like The Swan at Figges Marsh, and The
Red Lion and The Royal Standard at Colliers Wood, were opened to
cash in on the boom.

The new mobility encouraged tourism, and in his Picturesque Rides
and Walks, published in 1817, Hassell informed his readers that coaches
to Mitcham were leaving The Spread Eagle, Gracechurch Street, and
The Ship at Charing Cross at 11 o’clock in the morning and at 4, 6 and
7 in the evening.6 There were three morning coaches up to town at 8,
9 and 10 a.m., and another at 5 in the afternoon. On Sundays coaches

III -ROMANCE AND NOSTALGIA

III -ROMANCE AND NOSTALGIA
THE ERA OF THE STAGE COACH
The land tax records for Mitcham1 show that in 1783 the house to the
north of The White Hart2 was vacated by James Terry, who had rented
it for a number of years from Lewis Woodcock. The new tenant was
George Holden, whose “Mitcham and Tooting stage coaches” were
soon to become a familiar sight, clattering out of the yard at the rear
and, having collected passengers from the inn, setting off on the turnpike
road to London. It is not known if Holden, or indeed Terry before him,
had previous experience in the coaching business, but the time was
ripe for the development of public transport between Mitcham and
London, and Holden was to lay the foundations of a flourishing business
which remained in his family’s hands through four generations and for
some fifty years thereafter.

In the 1790s the first of Holden’s coaches left from The King’s Head
(now The Burn Bullock) and The White Hart each weekday morning
at 8 and 9 o’clock, and reached their destination at The Spread Eagle in
Gracechurch Street within the hour. The early coach returned
immediately, but the second stayed over to make the return journey to
the Cricket Green at 3 p.m. The afternoon coach from Mitcham left at
4 o’clock, and returned two hours later. On Sundays a very early coach
left Mitcham at 6 in the morning, returning at 8 a.m., whilst a second
left for town at 5 p.m. and was back in Mitcham by 7 p.m. This
service was augmented by an extra coach on Mondays and Saturdays
which left for the Golden Cross at Charing Cross at 9 a.m., and returned
at 3 p.m.. In addition to running the stage coaches, Holden also let out
post chaises and coaches to “any part of England”.3

By 1801 two-pair horse coaches were running between London and
Brighton on alternate days, one up, and the other down, driven by
Messrs. Crossweller and Hine.4 The Brighton coach passed through
Mitcham at about 8.15 in the morning, having left The Blossoms inn,
St Lawrence Lane, Cheapside, at 7, and would stop at The Cock, Sutton,
for breakfast at 9 a.m. The going was not easy, and the more robust
passengers were expected to alight and walk up the steeper hills and

which required wagons to convey “for every ton of coal carried for one
mile on any highway in Surrey or Kent, one cartload of cinder, gravel,
stone, sand, or chalk suitable for amending the said highways”. The
intention was that those whose use of the roads created the greatest
damage should be made to contribute to their maintenance, but
enforcement undoubtedly would have varied from district to district.
The General Highways Acts of 1766 and 1773 sought to improve matters
by giving greater power to magistrates to order the abatement of
nuisances, including the abuse of roads by farmers and frontagers, and
also to regulate the vehicles using the roads by stipulating wheel sizes,
maximum loads etc. Under the General Highways Act of 1773, if
desired by two-thirds of the parishioners assembled in vestry, the justices
were empowered to appoint a salaried surveyor of highways, paid out
of the local rate. This power was not widely used, and was not adopted
by Mitcham.

James Malcolm, describing the conditions in Surrey in 1805, said of
the roads in the vicinity of Mitcham

“In following this line of road down Balam hill, we find it in
summer deep in dust, and in the winter as deep in mud, and so it
continues almost the whole of the way to Mitcham, insomuch
that the Brighton coaches, and many of the Carshalton, Mitcham
and Sutton teams prefer going up Mitcham-lane to Streatham,
and thence along the Wash Way to London, though round about,
to the unpleasantness of wading through the dirt or sand of
Tooting, Balam, etc.. In the first place, no regard is paid to water
courses, nor to the level of the road, but it is in hills and holes, in
clay or in sand all the way. Mitcham itself is always in a bad
state, and never will be otherways while those high trees are
suffered to stand, which exclude both sun and air; the road is all
too narrow and too low; at the entrance, and through the town of
Sutton, the road is very bad, nor is it so good as it should be over
Walton heath…7

“From Tooting to Epsom through Merton, there is nothing to
boast of in point of management, the road is often very bad from
the late Mr. Walter Powel’s, in front of Alderman Skinner’s,

through the village of Merton, and as far as Mr. Polhill’s grounds
extend.”
through the village of Merton, and as far as Mr. Polhill’s grounds
extend.”

Malcolm went on to describe in some detail the two systems, parochial
and turnpike, under which English roads were maintained in his day.
Extremely critical of the failings of both, he would still have
acknowledged that since the middle of the previous century conditions
on the main roads at least had much improved. In 1718, for instance,
the roads from London to Surrey, including the nine miles to Sutton,
had been declared to be “dangerous to all persons, horses and other
cattle”, and almost impassable during five months of the year.9
Particularly bad was the valley of the Pyl brook between Rosehill and
Angel Hill, where the heavy London Clay was soon churned into a
hazardous morass after a spell of wet weather. Such conditions were
not exceptional, and the isolation they imposed on village communities
during the winter months, and the virtual impossibility of long distance
transport of heavy bulky goods was a serious impediment to both social
contact and economic development.

If complaints at the condition of the roads are almost as old as the
roads themselves, censure of ‘improvements’ is equally no new
phenomenon, and we find William Cobbett, for instance, in the early
19th century, railing at what he considered the deplorable waste of
money and misjudgement of priorities by the turnpike trustees, who
had reduced the gradient of Angel Hill at Sutton by constructing a
cutting to take the Brighton road.10 (Improvements to the same hill
some 40 years ago again provoked protests in the local press at what
many saw as unnecessary expenditure of public funds, although on
this occasion the official justification was improved road safety rather
than mere convenience to road users.)

Malcolm was obviously dissatisfied with the way in which the vestries
in general discharged their duty under the Act of 1555, and was
particularly critical of the ‘surveyors’ who, he pointed out, were required
to have little or no professional skill. It is true that in many parishes
what was a very unpopular job fell to illiterate, untrained men, who not
unexpectedly could be grossly inefficient in the performance of their
task. By the 18th century in Mitcham it had become the established

Wood underground station, but the Figges Marsh gate had presumably
been removed by the time the survey was conducted in 1865, for it is
not marked. The Epsom Trust expired on 15th June 1870 and all tolls
were ended in London by an Act of 1871. The Sutton gates operated
until midnight on 31st October 1881,18 when the Reigate turnpike trust
expired and the Brighton road became free throughout. The Local
Government Act of 1888 placed a duty to maintain the main roads on
the new county councils, leaving the secondary roads to the local
sanitary authorities – a division which in essence remains today.

Sheep and stagecoach in Whitford Lane, Mitcham. (c.1830)
(Copy of watercolour – artist unknown)

Reigate Trust was responsible, and operated a toll bar on the Brighton
Road. The charges exacted on the road from Tooting to Sutton in 1802
were 1d per horse, whether ridden or drawing,
Reigate Trust was responsible, and operated a toll bar on the Brighton
Road. The charges exacted on the road from Tooting to Sutton in 1802
were 1d per horse, whether ridden or drawing, but the scale was
modified over the years and in 1822 one shilling per wheel was required
of the persons driving through the Mitcham gate. Tolls were customarily
scaled to the wear and tear users were judged to inflict on the road
surfaces, and in 1822 the Petworth toll, for instance, charged one shilling
per wheel on steam carriages, but only fourpence halfpenny per wheel
for carriages with tyres not more than 4½ inches wide. Fourpence
halfpenny was charged per horse, but oxen and “neat cattle” passed
through at half this rate, and dogs drawing carts or barrows at one
penny only.

The rapid growth of the railways after 1830 meant the inevitable death
of the turnpike trusts as viable commercial enterprises, and between
1837 and 1850 the revenue received in tolls decreased by one third.
An attempt by Parliament in 1841 to give financial aid to the trusts at
the expense of the parish rates fanned the flames of resentment against
the turnpike system, which culminated in the disastrous ‘Rebecca’ Riots
in South Wales. The turnpike trusts in England were to endure a
lingering death for another 30 years before trusts began to be wound
up in increasing numbers by Parliament from 1862. In the 1860s
pressure mounted for the abolition of the Surrey turnpikes and the
removal of the toll-bars and charges which pressed heavily upon traders
on both sides of the Thames. After prolonged public agitation, turnpikes
on the Surrey side of the river, including all toll gates and bars on the
turnpike from Kennington Gate to Tooting and Sutton, were abolished
by Act of Parliament with effect from midnight on 3lst October 1865.17
Many of the gates in fact seem to have ceased collecting tolls a little
earlier, for on 20th October 1865 The Times reported that on the morning
of Wednesday the 18th all gates and bars on the Surrey and Sussex
roads had been thrown open. The materials of the tollhouses, gates,
side bars etc. were disposed of by auction, and were said to have fetched
high prices. Within a week scores of gates were swept away south of
the Thames, and the roads became the responsibility of the Highway
Districts. The 25in. OS map published in 1867 still showed the “Single
Gate T.P.” barring the Merton Road near the site of the present Colliers

custom, following legislation in 1691, for the vestry each September to
put forward the names of six gentlemen, from whom the justices would
select two to serve the following year. Despite Malcolm’s strictures,
this system seems to have worked with reasonable smoothness and
efficiency. Those selected by the Mitcham vestry were in the main
persons of some substance, and a surviving notice of composition from
1799, published by the two surveyors, Isaac Hellier (a partner in a
calico printing company operating at Phipps Bridge) and Thomas Green,
is formal and business-like.

By the early 19th century increasing use was being made of pauper
labour throughout the country, a practice which at first sight appeared
to offer an ideal solution to two major problems then besetting the
parishes – maintenance of the highways to an acceptable standard and
employment of the poor. Unfortunately in reality this proved inefficient,
and there was a need for constant supervision, for the paupers knew
they would receive parish relief whether they worked or not, and
accordingly had little incentive to apply themselves to the task, whilst
those with families to support were paid more than single men, which
again discouraged hard work.

The General Highways Act of 1835 swept away all the confusing
muddle of highway legislation, except that concerning the turnpike
trusts, and empowered parishes with populations in excess of 5,000
to appoint a board of management and a salaried surveyor. Statute
labour and team duty was also abolished, and the vestry, which
became the supreme governing body, was empowered to raise funds
by rates.

The Public Health Act of 1875 divided the whole of the country into
urban and rural sanitary districts. The urban authorities were already
administering their roads, and under the new Act rural sanitary
authorities could also be highway authorities. The Local Government
Act of 1888 established county councils, and in 1889 responsibility
for the main roads through Mitcham was transferred to the newly
elected Surrey County Council. Despite various measures to end
their functions, many parishes still managed to remain in control of
their roads until the passing of the Local Government Act in 1894,
which finally abolished all highway districts and ‘highway parishes’
and made all roads, other than major roads, the responsibility of
local councils.

The turnpike gate at Colliers Wood (“Merton Single Gate”) (c.1860)
The lane leading to Mitcham lies just beyond the toll gate, on the left.
Colliers Wood Underground station now occupies the site of the cottage.

The Mitcham roads, milestones and turnpike gates are shown clearly
on a map from Cary’s Survey of the Country 15 miles round London,
published in 1786.12 Another, entitled “Plan shewing the extent of the
Surrey and Sussex Roads” and dated 1850, shows some 60 miles of
road from the Elephant and Castle to East Grinstead via Streatham.
Croydon and Godstone, with a branch via Tooting terminating at
Sutton.13 The gate at Figges Marsh, the Merton Singlegate at Colliers
Wood, and the double gates near Merton Grove are also shown, as are
gates at Stonecot Hill and Rose Hill. The toll house for the last-named
gate, built in 1758, was transported to Wrythe Green in 1882 where it
still stands. It suffered damage by bombing in the 1939/45 War, but
has since been tastefully restored, and is occupied as a private house.14

The first Sutton toll gates were operating near The Cock inn in 1755,
under an Act of Parliament of that year.15 Beyond The Cock gate the

road widening in the 1960s.

The second trust, responsible for
the main road from Tooting
through Colliers Wood to
Merton, was “The Epsom Ewell
Tooting Kingston upon Thames
and Thames Ditton Turnpike
Trust”, which operated under
four 18th century Acts passed in
the reigns of George II and III.9
Eventually there were two
gates in the parish of Mitcham;
one at Colliers Wood (Merton
Singlegate), and the other
situated near the milestone at
Figges Marsh. It is amusing to
note that the latter was erected around 1839 after it became obvious
that many road users were managing to avoid the tolls payable at Colliers
Wood gate by making the detour through Mitcham!

According to R P Smith, in 1745 milestones were introduced from
Westminster and London Bridge to Banstead Downs, and in 1755 further
stones were added to reach Reigate.10 Like the erection of signposts or
‘finger posts’, the measurement of roads and the placing of milestones
at the roadside was a duty usually imposed on the turnpike trustees by
the enabling legislation. By the General Turnpike Act of 1766 it was
made compulsory for all turnpike trusts to erect milestones. Many
have since disappeared, often having been removed for security reasons
during World War II and not replaced, or set aside during road widening.
The fate of the milestone at Colliers Wood, close by The Royal Six
Bells and engraved “Whitehall 8 miles” and “Cornhill 9 miles” is typical.
Having survived for some 200 years, it was removed and thoughtlessly
buried by workmen employed by the local authority to carry out
roadworks.11

2. THE TURNPIKES
Even today, well over a century since the last turnpike trusts were wound
up and responsibility for the maintenance of the main road networks of
the country passed to the county authorities, the turnpikes still survive
in folk memory. Half nostalgic, evoking mental images of the Royal
Mail and stage coaches, perpetuated by scenes of snow-bound country
inns on Christmas cards, and spiced with colourful stories of
highwaymen, the memory is also in part disagreeable, recalling toll
gates and petty officialdom, frustration and inefficiency. The great era
of the turnpikes in Britain lasted for little more than a hundred years,
succumbing in the middle of the 19th century to increasing competition
from the expanding railway network. By the 1850s and 1860s the
stage coach and carrier’s wagon no longer provided the only available
means of long-distance transport for ordinary folk, and the horse-drawn
vehicle in its many forms was being steadily relegated to the service of
purely local needs. Only a few toll bridges and tunnels remained to
preserve the principle of direct payment by the traveller. Originally
conceived as a means of improving the open road for fast coaches and
private carriages, the turnpikes served that purpose well enough until
the new age of steam and railways captured the public imagination,
with their potential for fast, safe, cheap and comfortable transport. The
wheel has now turned full circle, and once again there is a revival of
interest in the concept of toll roads in Britain.

The first turnpike is attributed to a hermit, William Phelippe who, nearly
600 years ago, devoted the whole of his means to repairing a road
between Smithfield and Highgate. To reimburse himself, he conceived
the bright idea of erecting a bar and collecting tolls from users of the
road. His action was praised by the King, who had been aware of the
“mirey and dangerous state of the road” and desired that Phelippe might
be permitted to erect his toll bar.1

In 1663 gates were erected on the road between Wadesmill in
Hertfordshire and Stilton in Huntingdonshire because heavy barley
wagons on the way to the maltings were making the road impassable.
Again, as in the case of experimental legislation relating to parish roads,
the objective was to make the road user contribute towards maintenance,
and the tolls collected were applied to this end. The earliest turnpike

in Surrey seems to have been that constructed between Reigate and
Crawley. Under an Act of 1696in Surrey seems to have been that constructed between Reigate and
Crawley. Under an Act of 1696a narrow causeway between the two
towns had been restricted to horses only, but it was subsequently widened
and thrown open to all traffic on payment of a toll.3 Improvement
continued to be made throughout the second half of the 18th century,
culminating in the construction of the tunnel beneath Reigate Castle
grounds in 1823 which greatly annoyed Cobbett. Parliament authorised
the improvement of ten miles of road across the heaths and chalk
downland between Sutton and Reigate in 1755,4 and many of the
milestones erected at this time can still be seen.

Epsom was attaining popularity as a spa town in the 17th century, and
generated traffic to and from London. This does not in the main seem to
have passed so much through Mitcham as through Colliers Wood, Merton
and Ewell, following the old Roman road, the reason probably being
that the highway from Mitcham to Sutton could be dangerous and almost
impassable during the wetter months of the year. The year 1718 saw
what seems to have been one of the earliest turnpike Acts to be passed,
which sought to bring improvement to the roads from London to
Croydon, Sutton and Kingston and authorised the erection of toll gates
along them.3 Daniel Defoe (1660/1-1731), who knew and used these
highways, was a vigorous advocate of the principle of turnpike trusts as
a means of financing road improvement, and it may be more than
coincidence that another of the early trusts to be established in our part
of Surrey dates from only three years after his death. This was the
Turnpike Act of George II,5 passed in 1734/5 for “amending, widening,
and keeping in Repair the Roads from Epsom through Ewell and
Tooting”. One of the local trustees was Peter de St Eloy of Doctors
Commons, who by 1739 had purchased Colliers Wood House, and his
fellow trustees were no doubt gentlemen of similar standing.

Further Acts followed, such as that of George II, passed in 1747/8, “for
amending and making more effective certain earlier Acts of Geo. I & II,
making provision for the repair of roads from London to East Grinstead
via Sutton and Kingston”, and the Act of 1755 “for amending, widening
and keeping in Repair the Roads from Epsom, through Ewell, to Tooting
and from Ewell, to Kingston-upon Thames, and Thames Ditton”.6

Malcolm was obviously incensed at the failure of the trustees, as well
as the parish vestries, to repair the roads adequately, notwithstanding
the power with which they were endowed by statute. His criticism was
directed primarily at the incompetence of the so-called ‘surveyors’, with
their lack of technical knowledge, and the arbitrary way in which many
of them pressed their demands for labour. Considerable advances were
already being made in the principles of road construction by men like
Telford and Macadam, and by the time the great era of coaching arrived
in the early 19th century, many hundreds of turnpikes had been
constructed to a high standard.

The proliferation and amalgamation of turnpikes during the late 18th
and early 19th centuries led to a somewhat confusing situation,
summarised in the returns made in pursuance of an Act passed in the
first year of the reign of George IV – “An Act for obtaining Returns
from Turnpike Road Trusts of the amount of their Revenue and Expense
of maintaining the same”. Two trusts were responsible for main roads
running through the parish of Mitcham. The trust for the Surrey and
Sussex Roads had various roads under its control, including that from
the turnpike at Kennington Common to Sutton, whence the road
continued under the control of the Reigate Turnpike Trust. The trustees
for the Surrey and Sussex Roads, who operated under the Acts of 1801/
2 and 1817/18,8 were thus responsible for the road through Mitcham
from the Tooting parish boundary. Two of their milestones survive,
one (as we have already noted) at Figges Marsh, outside No 101 London
Road, and the other at the corner of Lower Green West and London
Road. A third stone, just beyond the Mitcham parish boundary on the
Sutton road (now Bishopsford Road), was near the junction with Pollard
Road. This has long since disappeared. The Figges Marsh stone, shown
as seven miles from London on John Rocque’s map of 1762, but “the
VIII mile stone from Cornhill” by Edwards, no longer bears a legible
inscription, whereas that at the Lower Green, described by Edwards as
“the IX mile stone from the Standard, Cornhill,” is now clearly inscribed
“Whitehall 8½ mls Royal Exchange 9 mls”. The inscription has almost
certainly been recut at some time, and the stone was also moved back
from its original position at the kerbside (and carelessly rotated through
90.. so that part of the inscription now faces away from the road) during

usually chosen out of the nearest, in order that the number of
trustees may, as near as possible, be always complete.

usually chosen out of the nearest, in order that the number of
trustees may, as near as possible, be always complete.
7

The several treasurers each appointed a ‘surveyor’ (very few of whom
had any knowledge of highway construction) who employed day
labourers, ordered the digging of gravel, and hired teams to transport it
to the place where it was to be laid. Great power was vested in the
trustees, who delegated much of it to the treasurers, and via them, to
the surveyors. They were empowered to enter into any man’s land
which was not a park, orchard, garden ground or nursery, to obtain
gravel, for which payment was made on a fixed scale. This frequently
ruined land for cultivation, and many of the more influential landowners
naturally sought to exert their influence on the trustees to avoid such
damage. Tracts of common waste, like Mitcham Common with its
deposits of sands and gravels, were particularly at risk, and by the mid19th
century much of the expanse of open heathland between the villages
of Mitcham and Croydon was pock-marked by the unsightly pits left
by the gravel diggers. Gravel also underlies much of Figges Marsh,
and the pond shown on early OS maps near the junction of Gorringe
Park Avenue with the London Road is almost certainly attributable to
the road builders.

London Road, Mitcham, with Figges Marsh to the left (c.1975).
This length of road is believed to have been constructed by the turnpike
commissioners in about 1750.

It will be appreciated that, with this multiplicity of Turnpike Acts and
the absence of any surviving records, it is often difficult today to say
whether or not any features of a particular road might be attributable to
the initiative of a turnpike trust, and rarely can a date for the road’s
construction or improvement be suggested. Sometimes the unusual
straightness of a length of highway shown on a 19th-century OS map,
cutting across a common or ignoring old field boundaries, gives a hint
that its origins do not lie in a typical winding English lane, but rather
that it resulted from deliberate planning. The road north from Mitcham
towards Tooting is such an example. Rocque’s map of the Environs of
London, surveyed between 1741 and 1745, and published around 1748,
shows no road on the western side of Figges Marsh. At this time Tooting
was reached via a lane leading past the old Elizabethan farmstead of
Biggin. This track, to the east of Figges Marsh, had almost certainly
originated as a detour on slightly higher land to avoid the area of boggy
ground created by the Little Graveney as it flowed northwards to join

the Graveney itself on the borders of Tooting. In Rocque’s map of
Surrey, published in 1762, the present London Road is shown, cutting
across the western edge of Figges Marsh and following a straight course
northwards to Tooting. This had evidently come into being around the
middle of the century, and it seems reasonable to attribute its
construction to the turnpike trust, one of whose milestones can still be
seen midway along the road. The old lane to Tooting survived as the
drive winding through the grounds of Gorringe Park House until the
early 20th century, when it was eventually replaced by St James Road
and Gorringe Park Avenue.

Malcolm described the foundation and powers of the turnpike trusts as
they existed at the end of the 18th century;

“… turnpike roads throughout the kingdom are placed under the
guidance and control of certain trustees for the benefit of the
public; … having been originally named in the act of Parliament,
which authorizes certain roads to be made public, are
commissioned to fill up every vacancy that may arise by death,
removal, or any legal disqualification; by appointing a successor
out of the district in which such vacancy happens, or in the case
of there being no fit person within that division, then one is

Streatham Road in the late 19th century.
The fence of Gorringe Park is on the left.