Wandsworth in 1842
Wandsworth is on both sides of the river Wandle at its junction with the Thames. It is about 7 miles from the General Post-office, on the old Portsmouth road. The London and South-Western Railway and the Surrey Iron Railway run through the parish. Wandsworth is called in ‘Domesday’ Wandesorde and Wendlesorde. The area of the parish is 1,820 acres : the population, in 1831, was 6,879. The main street is along the Portsmouth road. There are some good mansions, inhabited chiefly by wealthy Londoners. There are manufactures of British matting, bed-sacking, bolting-cloths, wire-blinds, candles, and hats : there are a distillery, vinegar-works, malt-houses, breweries, dye-houses, corn and paper mills, an iron-foundry, lime-kilns, coal-wharfs, and calico print-works. The church is a plain modern building ; and there are two chapels-of-ease, St. Anne’s and Summer’s Town chapels ; and some dissenting places of worship. There are gas-works, a police-station, a savings-bank ; and infant, national, and Lancasterian schools ; and a school of industry, besides a number of private schools. In Garrett Lane, between Wandsworth and Tooting, it was customary to hold a mock election on the meeting of every new parliament ; but this piece of burlesque has been discontinued for several years : it gave subject and title to one of Foote’s dramatic pieces. Several of the French Protestant refugees in the seventeenth century settled at Wandsworth. The living is a vicarage, of the clear yearly value of £840, with a glebe-house : the perpetual curacy of St. Anne’s Chapel is of the clear yearly value of £162. |