Earlsfield

Post to the west Earlsfield

Post to the east Wandsworth Common

Post to the north Wandsworth

Earlsfield Road
310 Conservative Club in the 1950s
320 United Reform Church converted to flats. This was originally a Congregational church and Sunday school.
95a St.James District church. In 1938 St James' Church, Earlsfield Road was transferred from the parish of St Andrew to the parish of St Anne. After the Second World War the church was converted into a hall and was used as a centre for parish work. It appears to have been demolished and here is now housing on the site.

Fieldview
Fieldview Estate. A garden suburb was planned here by the landowners Magdalen College Oxford, but building ended because of the Great War. In the 1930s Wandsworth Borough Council bought this area between Fieldview and Ellerton Road for the Fieldview Estate
Sports Grounds. Wandsworth Council provided playing fields between the Fieldview and Openview estates. They were seen as a recreation facility for the use of estate residents. The northern end is used partly for allotments. The playing fields are bounded by railings with ornamental gates and brick gate piers.
Spencer Lawn Tennis and Cricket Ground. The club was formed in 1872 when the local landowner, Earl Spencer, permitted the founders to drain and use part of Wandsworth Common. The club moved to Fieldview in 1903. The Spencer Club provides a wide range of sporting activity including cricket, tennis and hockey.

Garratt Lane
Earlsfield Station. This opened in 1884 and lies between Wimbledon and Clapham Junction stations on South West Rail main line. The name 'Earlsfield' originates from the name of a 19th house which was on the site of the station. When the site was sold by to the railway company one of the conditions of sale was that the station would be called 'Earlsfield.  Although it was opened as ‘Earlsfield’ it was renamed ‘Earlsfield and Summerstown’ soon after but in 1902 the name reverted to ‘Earlsfield. The line was built by the London & South Western Railway on the route from Nine Elms to Woking in 1838 - eight years before Surrey Iron Railway closed. It became part of the Southern Railway during grouping in 1923. The station then passed to the Southern Region of British Railways on nationalisation in 1948. The main entrance was rebuilt and lifts were installed. The station has had a major refurbishment complete in 2012. . The old station buildings appear to be a bae/restaurant
Surrey Iron Railway. When Earlsfield Station was built the London and South Western Railway, was required to build a bridge over the Surrey Iron Railway here at the crown of the arch and adjacent to a similar bridge over Garratt Lane. In 1884 both bridges were demolished and rebuilt as a single-span bridge over the road. This was when the railway lines were widened and Earlsfield Station was opened. The station has a tunnel under the lines just inside the entrance and parallel to the road, which must be roughly the course of the Surrey Iron Railway.
The Earlsfield. This Bar is in what appears to be the original station buildings of Earlsfield Station.  The lowest bar is in a tunnel beneath the building which could well be the tunnel referred to as being on the line of the Surrey Iron Railway
356 Tara Theatre. The building dates from 1891 and was originally a draper’s shop plus a Mission Hall from 1912. By the 1970s it was a chiropodists plus the Church of the Nazarene. Tara was founded by a group of young Wandsworth residents in response to a racist murder in Southall staging productions aimed at making imaginative connections across cultures through theatre. In 1983 Tara Arts moved in to this building and work started on renovating the building to create Britain's first multicultural theatre using reclaimed London bricks, railway sleepers & Indian wood. In 2016 the theatre was opened by Sadiq Khan,

Godley Road
Godley Gardens. This public park was designed as part of the Fieldview Estate, for Wandsworth Council in the 1930s. Originally it was a possible site for a church, but it was left as open space. It is on a gentle slope of grass fenced by half-height spear-top railings. It is a quiet sitting out area with a raised planting area and colourful shrubs while blossom trees provide colour and fruit.  Thee is a gate at each of the four corners, two on Godley Road and two on Tilehurst Road

Groom Crescent
Built as prison officers’ housing after the Second and named in memory of a Prison Office killed in the war.
37 Phoenix Members Bar Club also Greenside Social Club

Heathfield Avenue
Neal’s Nurseries. This is the largest plant centre in Central London. It has been a nursery garden since 1850. All year round there is a collection of garden plants, and a traditional glasshouse with house plants.

Heathfield Road
Wandsworth Prison. This was built in 1848 as Surrey House of correction, to supplement Brixton Prison. It was designed by Daniel Rawlinson Hill according to the humane separate system principle where a number of corridors radiate from a central control point. It has eight wings on two units. The smaller unit was originally designed for women. The gatehouse is constructed of stone and is now incorporated within the new gatehouse. The main prison buildings are in brick and the cell blocks are three storey with basements. Originally each prisoner had toilet facilities but these were removed to increase prison capacity and more cells were created in the 1900s by opening up basements.  There are two gyms and a sports hall. In 1951, Wandsworth was the holding prison for a national stock of implements for corporal punishment. 135 executions were carried out there and the execution room and equipment remained until 1994 and is now in a museum. The room is a tea room for officers.  An outer brick wall of the 1970s encloses the gatehouse, a mock fortress with a pair of three-storey tower. The more utilitarian prison buildings behind have wings radiating from a tall central tower. Wandsworth is the most overcrowded prison in England. There is a prison museum. By 1877 an engineer's shop had been added. There was also a pump house since demolished as well as a washhouse, a laundry and a hospital. A new reception building built in 1906-7 has since been demolished. There are facilities and chaplains for several religious groups.

Heathfield Square
Originally Prison officer housing in an area which includes the prison itself and a large grassed open space.

Kingham Close
Built on the site of the workhouse

Lyford Road
19 South London Bowling & Social Club. This was established in 1900. Its aim is to promote that game of competitive bowls. The club belongs to what was originally the White Horse League although this has been the Young’s Brewery League for the past 17 years. The original clubhouse was demolished at the end of the 2004 season, with the new facilities being built and the bowls green being resurfaced.
Lyford Road Scout Hut. This is The Romany scout hut, home of 1st Wandsworth Scouts. The site was previously The Grange Tennis and Croquet Club

Magdalen Road
Magdalen Lawn Tennis Club
Earlsfield Library.  The library originated in 1895 in a shop and supplied with books from West Hill Library. They eventually moved to a larger premises in Garratt Lane. This was financed by Alderman Sir John Lorden until the Council took over in 1907.  By the 1920s it was too small for the demands out on it and a new library opened in 1926.  It was the first library in Wandsworth on the open access system.  It is now managed by Better.
Wandsworth Cemetery. This is on sloping ground and was set up by the Wandsworth Burial Board in 1878 on land belonging to Magdalen College. It was later enlarged in 1898.  End of 19th Century. The entrance gates have red brick and stone gate piers with gabled heads supporting octagonal plinths. The layout features a gridiron pattern of paths meeting in a series of circuses around which the older monuments are grouped. The newer section of the cemetery is on raised land beyond a line of horse chestnut trees. The main entrance has a lodge and driveway leading to the chapels, with two garden areas enclosed by hedging and a stone wall. It contains five 1914-1918 War Grave Plots which are on the main path from Magdalen Road.  - A general Military Plot, and ones covering Australia, Newfoundland, New Zealand and South Africa. The Military Plot has a Screen Wall with the names of those buried in it and those in 200 unmarked graves in other parts of the cemetery.
Beatrice Potter Primary School. The school dates from 1927. Its name comes from the author’s visits to her governess who lived by Wandsworth Common and to whom she wrote, using her characters to illustrate her letters. The current school replaced older smaller buildings.
Earlsfield Baptist Church. This dates from 1900.

Mountbatten Mews
Engineer. This is on the site of an engineering works .In the 1950s this was Fallows, Wrigley & Co. Earlsfield Pattern Works.

Openview Way
This runs alongside sports field
Wandlea Bowls and Social Club
BEC Old Boys Rugby Club

Swaffield Road
Workhouse. In 1886, a large new workhouse was built here by the Wandsworth and Clapham Union in what was then open countryside. It was designed by TW Aldwinckle. There was a central administration block with dining rooms for each sex, kitchens and a chapel. There were three-storey dormitory pavilions, and on the women's side, a nursery block and also a separate children's block. The men's side was a stone-yard.  To the north was a large casual ward with sleeping and stone-breaking cells. The site was taken over by the London County Council in 1930 and became a Public Assistance Institution, renamed Brockle Bank in 1948 and continued until 1972. It has since been demolished and housing built on the site.

Sources
Bayliss. Retracing the First Public Railway
British Listed Buildings. Web site
Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Web site
Clunn. The Face of London
Field. London Place Names
London Borough of Wandsworth. Web site
London Encyclopaedia
London Gardens online. Web site.
London Open House. Web site
National Archives. Web site
Pevsner and Cherry. South London
Southwark Diocese. Web site
Workhouses. Web site