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Southside House dates from at least the C18th and has a long history, but its garden was largely the creation of Hilda Pennington-Mellor and Dr Axel Munthe, who bought the property in c.1910, and their son Major Malcolm Munthe who restored it after WWI. It comprised a series of garden rooms, linked by water and pathways, with sculptures, temples, a small grotto and pet cemetery. Ownership was transferred to the Pennington-Mellor-Munthe Charity Trust in 1982 and Southside House was opened to the public; following the death of Malcolm Munthe in 1995, it continued to be run by a Trust, opening to the public for guided tours, group visits and garden openings. The property was sold in 2022 and is no longer open to the public; plans for restoration are ongoing (2024).
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St Helier Estate was the largest LCC estate to be built south of the river and spans the boroughs of Sutton and Merton. It is one of a number of important LCC cottage estates inspired by the Garden City movement encouraged by Sir Ebenezer Howard and the pioneering town planning of Barry Parker and Raymond Unwin whose common characteristic is small-scale housing, often with excellent detailing, cul-de-sacs, generous verges and communal open spaces. Moreton Green is one of the largest areas of green within the estate in Merton.
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The land for St John the Divine Church was donated to mark the anniversary of Nelson's death. The Church was built in 1914. It is adjacent to Nelson Gardens. It has a pleasant garden, which was re-designed in 1998 as a Quiet Garden and opened by the Bishop of Kingston and Mayor of Merton. Mementos of Nelson found in the church include an altarpiece made from timber from HMS Victory. Two cannon from the ship stand in the neighbouring gardens.
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The parish church of St Lawrence was built in 1636, probably a rebuilding of an older church as St Lawrence was often a Saxon dedication. Additions were made to the church in later centuries. The churchyard has a lych-gate on London Road. Gravestones are set within the grass, and there are a number of good C18th monuments, including that of John Howard (d.1764). Among those buried here were Huguenots who came to England fleeing religious persecution, including Peter Mauvillian who set up calico works along the Wandle at Ravensbury in the early C18th. Part of the burial ground was built over for a new Rectory.
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The site is made up of 2 core areas: the current churchyard surrounding the medieval church with numerous monuments to local dignitaries; and Glebe Fields adjacent. In front of the church on church lane is a smaller elongated oval area of shrubland within the wider part of the dog-leg shape of Church Lane recorded on the Surrey OS 25 inch map from 1865.
The suburban development of Merton Park took place from the 1870s initially by John Innes, who was buried here in 1904. The churchyard also features some fine trees. A gate in the churchyard leads to Glebe Fields. Glebe Fields was shown as meadowland in Thomas Milne's Map of 1800. It remained undeveloped when the Merton Park estate was laid out in the late C19th. The site of the hedge marking the division between two fields remains as a bank and ditch and a row of horse chestnut trees. Glebe Fields forms a rare rural setting to the Church and its churchyard fully accessible to the public with a public path across from the car park of the (modern) church hall through to the corner of Erridge Road where it meets Stratton Close.
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The medieval parish church of St Mary Wimbledon has been rebuilt several times over the years, and the earliest record of a church here is in the Domesday Book of 1086. The churchyard is on sloping ground and was extended in 1862 when an adjacent tithe barn was dismantled. The enclosing wall dates from C18th or earlier, and the tombs date from the early C18th and include several large monuments such as that of Gerard de Visme (d.1797), a Portland stone pyramid, and those of the Marryat and Spencer families. Now closed to burials apart from those in existing family plots, the churchyard has a Garden of Remembrance for cremated ashes. Near the entrance to the church is a stuccoed early C19th lodge with seated stag that formerly belonged to Wimbledon Park House. Adjacent to the churchyard to the west is Church Field, which was purchased by the church in 1956.
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There has been a church here since at least the C13th, and Church Road Cemetery opened in 1559. The current church of St Peter and St Paul, to the south-west of Mitcham village centre, was built in 1819-21 by George Smith. It was repainted in the 1990s as part of a Challenge Anneke television programme. The churchyard is on the site of an old Saxon burial ground; it was expanded in 1855 and 1880 to the north, and again in 1909 when it took over the former 'Vicar's Field'.
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Streatham Park Cemetery opened in 1909, but was originally conceived in 1890 as the Great Southern Cemetery, matching the Great Northern Cemetery that opened in 1861 in Southgate. Cemetery buildings included a lodge, an Anglican Chapel and a small Roman Catholic chapel designed by John Bannen, who also designed the Crematorium, which opened in 1936. The cemetery lodge and RC chapel have since been demolished, the Anglican chapel later re-opened as the cemetery office. The cemetery is laid out on a grid and near the entrance are austere family vaults; there are various gardens of remembrance, including rose gardens. One of the founders of the cemetery, Frederick Field (d.1923) is buried here. The cemetery has a long association with the Variety Artistes' Benevolent Fund, with 200 variety artistes buried here between 1921-44.
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The site for the park was once part of Tamworth Farm and was donated by the Tamworth Trust. Tamworth Farm Recreation Ground opened in 1926 and is still protected by the Trust. The park had a railed and hedged area of planting along the front boundary to London Road, with roses and trees, and there was a bowling green adjacent, no longer in use. New facilities have been laid out since 2004. The park is backed by allotments that are included in the site.
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The tithe map of 1847 shows the site of Wandle Meadow Nature Park as Byegrove Mead, which may have been managed as water meadows. In 1868 the Wimbledon to Streatham railway was constructed nearby and in 1877 the meadow was acquired for the Wandle Valley Sewage Works, built adjacent to the Wandle River. After the sewage works closed in 1970, a proposal to build a football stadium on the land south of the railway was strongly opposed and the site was eventually preserved as a nature reserve. Above-ground structures were demolished and made safe, with the old filter beds remaining and now creating an interesting wildlife habitat, with footpaths and cycle routes laid out. A bridge links it to Garfield Recreation Ground, which existed as a public park from the early C20th.
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The site of Wandle Park was formerly that of Wandlebank House and grounds, owned from 1791-1821 by James Perry, who owned the Merton Corn Mill, an important industry on the Wandle River from medieval times. The land was purchased by Wimbledon Corporation and vested in the National Trust for a public park, which opened in 1907. The Mill Pond Garden was added in 1910 purchased through public subscription; the pond dating the late Eighteenth Century was created as a reservoir for the Merton Corn Mill. Wandle Park was re-designed in 2003 in order to transform its wetland features.
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Watermeads is a remnant of the historic watermeadows alongside the west bank of the River Wandle, which for centuries had industrial usage with numerous watermills along its banks as well as watercress beds and trout fishing. The site includes an old fish pond and Paper Mill Cut, one of the Wandle's many channels and branches dug for milling. The land was in private hands until it was purchased in 1913 following an active campaign led by Octavia Hill, one of the founders of the National Trust, Watermeads becoming one of the first sites acquired by the Trust. From the interwar years until shortly after the end of World War II, a major planting initiative was undertaken by the River Wandle Open Spaces Committee and the National Trust with local schoolboys encouraged to participate in planting new trees. Since then Watermeads was developed as a nature reserve, and at one time was only open to keyholders. The wetland habitat became clogged and overgrown but since 2015 the Trust has undertaken significant improvement and rehabilitation works and following a period of closure Watermeads Nature Reserve has now reopened with improved public access.