|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
| Home | Business: Features | Pictures | See & Do | Community | RAs | History | Bulletin Boards | Site Index | ||||
|
||||
|
Epsom Common
Mediaeval Epsom was a small place, containing little more than 300 people. Apart from 7the church and a few large farmhouses, the village was a cluster of flimsy buildings, each standing within its own garden, where a few vegetables and herbs were grown. Those which on a wet or clayey site, like the Common, would be raised and surrounded by a ditch. The land around the village was divided into four. There was arable land, laid out in strips, which grew most of the field; enclosed fields, used for cash crops and for bringing on livestock; the grazing land of the Downs, which supported large flocks of sheep; and finally, the waste land, which provided fern and heather for bedding or thatching, furze and turves for fuel, and timber for hurdles, fencing and building. It is this waste which we now call Epsom Common. Records from the fifteenth century mention a settlement called Atte Clay, now West Hill, and it seems that occupation stretched from here down to Epsom Common. There has been much encroachment on the edges of the Common, some of it from Woodcote and more on the side by Stamford, which means 'the stoney ford'. This encroachment had begun by the late mediaeval period, as it is recorded in 1495 that Alice Hyde had enclosed a portion of the waste near Stamford Chapel and built a cottage there. The site of the chapel was still remembered in the seventeenth century, but by then it had been pulled down. It stood near the end of what is now Eastdean Avenue. In 1618 or thereabouts, a commoner called Henry Wicker was looking after his animals in a dry summer. He found a trickle of water in the hollow hoofprint of a cow, and dug around it, but his cattle would not drink because of its mineral taste. Wicker tried the water himself, and was the first person in history to experience the effects of Epsom salts. The wells soon became popular - by 1656, gentlemen from as far away as Rutland and Cornwall were coming to spend a week at Epsom, usually in August when it was most popular. A well had been built around the original spring, at the back of a small house with rooms where people could stand and drink. As the effects came on, they retired to the bushes of the Common, which were left standing at a discreet distance from the open ground around the Wells. Jaded Londoners were revived by the waters, and by the pleasant and healthy atmosphere of the Common around them. Some people were sent here for several weeks by their doctors; they came out onto the Common each day to drink from stoneware mugs at the Wells. But by the 1690s, there were rival attractions in Epsom itself, and soon after a new well was opened in the town, the old site closed down. Epsom fell from favour as a Spa in the 1720s and although there were attempts to revive the drinking of the waters, these only reached a local clientele. In 1663 the Lord of the Manor had granted a licence to George Parsons to dig and make bricks on the waste at a place called Somergate for five years. The Somergate or Summer's Gate to the Common stood where Wheelers Lane turns towards to the Jolly Coopers. The brickworks were needed to supply bricks for the new buildings erected in Epsom, for the town was growing as its Spa developed, and since the cost of transport was high and the roads were poor, it made sense to use bricks made locally. According to his license, George Parsons was to dig only ten rods a year, and to refill the pits so that cattle could graze again. This appears not to have been done, since a ring of clay pits around the site was never filled in, and it was this rather than any manorial control which stopped the further encroachment of squatter's tenements onto the Common. During the eighteenth century, the Common was nearly transformed by a major transport scheme. This was the Grand Imperial Ship Canal, which was planned to link London and Portsmouth; it was intended to take the largest ships, which would then reach London in a day, while it took them twelve days to work round the coast. Ships would have sailed via Guildford through Epsom Common and Chessington, if the canal had ever been built. Instead, it was the railway which changed the look of the land. The line from Leatherhead to Epsom was opened in 1859, cutting the Common in half, and running just below Castle House. Once the spread of colonisation was halted by the clay pits, the built-up area was slowly filled in with more cottages, gardens and grazing areas. By 1811 the present edge of the Common had taken shape. By the 1860s only a few more cottages had been added, but between 1890 and 1915 more development and subdivision of the larger plots of land took place, and ever since then there has been a slow infill of houses. Already in 1911, the Council had tried to get a regulatory scheme for the Common, though Lord Rosebery stated that he was against any scheme that materially interfered with the rural condition or aspect of the area. But it was not until March 1936 that the Council were able at last to purchase the Common, paying £4000. When they took over the day to day running of it, they had to stop the dumping of rubbish. This was achieved in part by filling in many of the old clay pits. In the 1850s the Council needed land for a cemetery, and a site was found on the Common; this was the area bordered by Wells Road, Dorking Road, Castle Road and the Railway. However, the plot of land was too small, and in any case the ground was so wet that the deceased would soon have floated up again. In 1865 came an attempt by some members of the Local Board of Health to enclose the Common. By selling the land off for building, they hoped to lower the rates for Epsom as a whole; as an added bonus, the draining of the Common would supply the town with water. At this time none of the Common was enclosed apart from the main Stew Pond, which had been fenced and ploughed up since 1855, and the Stamford Green Cricket pitch, which had been set out in the early 1850s. In 1865, the supporters of enclosure did their best to play down the use being made of the Common. They saw no sign of walkers or picnickers; true, there were a few ponds used to water cattle, but not many cattle, and only four or five people put out sheep to graze. But the Common had its allies. John Hankey J.P. asked the committee to protect the open spaces around London, which he called London's lungs. To build on the Common would be a grave injury to the neighbourhood, for many families went there for evening walks and strolls about the furze. Since the railway was built, many people had come for picnics. There were at least thirty families who would be beggared by enclosure, and though they had originally come as squatters, they had put down roots and now got half their living from the Common. The brickworks appears to have closed by the 1890s, and the area became a small farm until it was developed as Willis Close. As the brickworks closed, the laundry business took off, providing work for the womenfolk. Washing was dried around the Common on lines, but as there was a fee due to the Lord of the Manor for this, much was just hung out over the bushes to dry. Many of the women would wash or iron just one kind of garment, some doing only sheets, some shirts, some even specialising in handkerchiefs. Washing could arrive from London on the first morning train and be washed, dried and returned the same day. One laundry, run by the Lewins family, was to give its name to one of the roads on the Common, and Isabella Lewin gave her name to Isabella Cottages near the laundry. By the 1930s, the laundries were losing business. Certainly they stood in need of some modernisation. At Epsom Common Laundry, thirteen female workers were using one loo in a private house nearby. The windmill was a landmark of the Common. Built in 1773, it stood at the end of Mill Lane (now Wells Road) until Derby Day 1873 when it burnt to the ground. The mill, owned by the Lord of the Manor, was not insured but the contents were; water was pumped on the fire until the fire engine ran dry, but by then the mill was just a burning mass. This event highlighted the lack of mains water on most of the Common - even Wells House, home of the Lord of the Manor, had no mains supply, and Lewins Laundry was operating without mains water. Parts of the Common used standpipes, but had no water with which to fight fires: only Stamford Green had a mains supply. The first Christ Church, described as a rather pretty structure, was built in 1843 for the working men of the Common .This church stood on the site of the present Scout Hut, and soon became too small, as it was filled by an attentive congregation in the morning and again at three o'clock. The present Church was consecrated in 1876, having been financed mostly by the Trotter family of Horton. Miss Trotter gave £8000, other members of the family £2000, and Lord Rosebery paid for the south aisle. The tower was not begun until 1885, and the bells were finally consecrated in 1890. The church came to play a large part in the social life of the Common, from the Mothers Meeting or the surprisingly successful Temperance Weeks. The Sunday School led to a day school on West Hill, and for a time this was the only education for younger children in the area. The building of the first church hall on West Hill (now a school) greatly improved the social life of the Common. As well as the normal church meetings, more concerts were held which lead in the 1930s to the Christ Church Players. Such was their success that they went on to bigger local venues and entertained much of Epsom. The dances in the hall in the early 1960s gave local lads, including a very young Jimmy Page, the chance to form and play in their groups. Christ Church too had its own mission church, St. Michael's. This was a tin hut off Woodlands Road in what is now Marneys Close; the Close is named after a local Gypsy family who are by tradition the last to have burnt a caravan after the death of a family member there. Already in 1908 the Council had leased the Stew Ponds for bathing and swimming, maybe because Stamford Pond was in such a foul condition. It had not been cleared since 1893, when five or six hundred loads of mud had been removed to stop it smelling. The winter that year was a cold one and a quarter of the Stew Ponds was reserved for skating, at a charge of 3d a day. By the 1910s, an attendant had been appointed and the Surrey County Council held school swimming contests there, while during World War I troops were allowed to bath naked if privacy could be secured. By 1934 life was getting difficult for the attendants at the Stew Ponds. They wanted uniforms - at present they only had hats, and a uniform was essential to keep the public under control. With growing concern for hygiene in the 1930s, swimming was considered unsafe in the Stew Ponds and the bathing huts were removed. In 1910 some fifty pigs were kept on the Common, at six different sites. After the first World War, health inspectors began to catch up with these premises. In Bracken Path pigs had been kept, killed, and turned into sausages amongst scenes of rudimentary hygiene. Now the slaughter of pigs was forbidden here and in Willows Path and Mill Road - all animals were to go to the local slaughterhouse instead. 66 Bracken Path was to be used only as a dairy, and not to make sausages. There were still complaints about pig-keeping around the Common, with outbreaks of swine fever. In Bracken Path fourteen pigs were slaughtered and buried in lime in the garden. The Common was not a healthy place. One lodging house, where five double beds shared one large room, had to be disinfected because of tuberculosis in 1910; there had also been a fatal case of diphtheria. During World War I there began a slow improvement in housing stock, which continued through the 1920s and 1930s. Many of the cottages were showing their age, and needed to be fitted with drains instead of ditches. Usually there was no damp-course, and many of the cottages had been enlarged by incorporating outbuildings from old stables as part of the living accommodation. 1938 saw more slum clearance around the Common, when numbers 60 to 78 Wheelers Lane were demolished. This row of cottages, known as the Pantiles, was first described in 1849, and they were in a poor condition even then. The 1920s saw concern about the poor state of the roads - Wheelers Lane and Lewins Road in particular. Workers on the Unemployment Relief Scheme were brought in to drain the Common; they dug a ditch from the back of the Jolly Coopers to the Cricketers, but this did not stop widespread flooding in Stamford Green. Five years later, unemployed labourers returned to make up the roads at Bracken Path and Church Side. The Council bought shovels and digging forks for them, and purchased flint and chalk from Woodcote Park, brought in on the newly repaired municipal motor lorry. Times were hard on the Common, and a National Kitchen was opened. In October 1924 the Council made an offer for the freehold of the Stew Ponds and any other parts of the freehold that the Lord of the Manor might want to sell. They wanted to preserve trees, lay paths, put in drainage, and generally improve the Common. At this time Epsom was one large building site. New estates were going up everywhere, roads were being widened, new sewers put in; even the cemetery was enlarged. The need for open space had never been more acute. The Lord of the Manor got little from the Common, for the traditional rights to cut timber, take and sell turf, and dig up gravel and flints were only producing £14/15/7d - less than the £23 which he derived from the shooting rights. A few cattle and horses continued to graze near Christ Church, where the Vicar complained of the annoyances which they left behind when they were led through the churchyard. During the 1920s building began around the Common, when H. & F. Rolls built houses in Christ Church Road. Bracken Path and Church Ride were widened to 15 feet but Willow Path was left as it was. In 1925, Dorking Road was widened from Epsom Hill to the Ashtead border, but footpaths were still bad. The one outside the old Castle Cottages was in a disgraceful condition; as soon as people got out of their gates, the mud ran over the tops of their boots. They said they needed a surfaced path, but laying a layer of clinker would be better than nothing. Building work went on through the late 1920s, and the bailiff on the Common was told not to consent to carters tipping rubbish there, particularly at Castle Road. This area of the Common had to be covered in a layer of soil to hide tipping. In 1930 the Wells House came up for sale, along with its farm. The Council decided not to buy the house but considered buying part of the estate, hoping to be able to replace land on the Common if a new road was built across it to Horton Lane. However, in June the 42-acre estate was sold to house builders, and plans for the first 12 houses were submitted. In March 1935 the Wells House became a private school, and again proposals for a road across the Common was discussed, following the construction of a further 80 houses by D. Garner & Sons at the Wells. The next year saw a further seventy houses in the Crescent and the Drive, with plans for shops at the entrance of the estate. Two years later the layout for the last 491 homes at the Wells was passed, along with arrangements for the preservation of the Old Wells. The shop at 19 Willows Path sold fried fish as well as keeping pigs; inspectors in the 1920s ordered it to be scrubbed out, and in future fish waste was to go in special bins. A few years later, another fried fish shop at Claremont Cottage was told to clean up its act, and to stop using the building next door as a stable. Highfield Farm, one of the last places to keep cattle, became a registered dairy for the wholesale trading and production of milk. At this time refreshment stalls began to appear at the Stew Ponds, and at road junctions where Christ Church Road met Horton Lane and where Dorking Road met Wells Road. By 1930, the Common's fried fish shop had moved to 65 Stamford Green Road but it was still not up to standards of the health inspector, and had to be cleaned again. Soon after this, the fried fish shop was on the move again and there were attempts to open it at Castle House in 1938. Late in 1939, a Royal Engineers Camp was set up on the Common, building a searchlight battery as part of the defences for London. In 1941, Lewins Laundry and Woodside Laundry turned to war work; the Council paid for improvements so that the decontamination of rescue clothing could take place, and each laundry was given a small area of the Common which was cleared for the drying and airing of protective clothing. The Council rented out the Stew Pond Field for grazing and the production of food, and part of the Common was taken over for military purposes. A post for fire-watchers and air raid wardens was built at the entrance to the Wells Estate, and the following year an overhead telegraph line was hung across the Common between Willows Path to Chessington Road. In the 1940s the Common began to be used for military training. Some 120 acres towards Ashtead were taken for this purpose, and prohibited to the public. By May 1942, the need to grow more food was acute, but only six acres of the Common were in use as allotments, at the junction of Wells Road and Dorking Road. Many complaints were received of the poor quality of soil, and free sludge had to be supplied from the sewage works to fertilize it. Folk around the Common began keeping pigs as they had many years before, along with poultry, goats and rabbits. During October 1943 new parts of the Common were requisitioned. Potatoes were grown here, but they were so poor that they were only fit for animal food. Animals returned to graze the Common, both horses and goats. W Command of the Home Guard took over the Common for what was called 'certain purposes', at first until April but later until the end of the war. A fire trailer pump was added to the warden's post at the Wells, since fire bombs and at least one high explosive bomb had fallen on the estate. During 1943 the Surrey War Agricultural Executive Committee wanted to convert the Common, along with the Downs, for agricultural use. Stanley Wootton and Walter Nightingale averted the threat by making other land available to protect the Downs. During May 1944 the Common was made over for tactical infantry training, but without the use of live ammunition or vehicles. Later this training would be put into practice on D Day. July 1945 saw the Council regain control of the Common. Anti-tank trenches on the open ground had become unsafe, so the War Office was asked to fill them in; they replied that they had no intention of reinstating the Common, but would discharge any liability by a payment. The Council could use labour from prisoners of war to fill them in. Tank traps which accompanied these trenches can still be seen in the grounds of Manor Park They had formed part of the Outer London Defence Line, which ran through Epsom, and if Britain had been invaded, the last full-scale battle to defend London would have been fought across Epsom Common.
|
|
|
||
| Top
of page | Sponsors
| About Epsom and Ewell on the Internet is operated by Internetworks Ltd of Epsom as a service to our community. It is supported by local businesses appearing on our feature pages which is a cost-effective way of promoting your services to our community. We appreciate your feedback. Kindly notify any problems to the webmaster. Last updated |
||
|
|
|
