Purley Library Grounds

Thomas More Catholic School was originally the Warehousemen and Clerks Schools whose origins date back to December 1853. The school began in a house in New Cross, but soon larger premises were needed and in 1862 the present site was purchased, renamed Russell Hill after the school's President. The handsome red-brick buildings were opened by the Prince of Wales and the school grounds were laid out with various sports facilities such as cricket lawn and fields. Mr Ayles, Headmaster from 1878-96 and a keen gardener, had an apple orchard by his house. Much of the school grounds behind the main buildings have been built over, but landscaping at the front remains with mature trees, steps and terraces as indicated on the map of 1868.

Rotary Field was given to the people of Purley by the Purley Rotary Club in 1925. In the first half of the C19th the ground was part of the route of the 'World's First Railway Line', the Surrey Iron Railway laid down in 1803. It operated in much the same way as the canals, with people paying tolls to take their own horse-drawn wagons along the iron rails. The line was abandoned in 1846 but parts of the trackbed and section of track can be seen in the park. A drinking fountain commemorating Queen Victoria was erected in 1901, later resited to the library gardens by Banstead Road.

The Webb Estate was laid out from 1888 onwards by William Webb, a chartered surveyor and horticulturist who purchased 260 acres of land in Purley. He developed this as an upmarket residential estate according to his 'Garden First' system whereby landscaping and infrastructure should be established before house-building began. He set up a nursery to grow hedging, trees, shrubs and flowers for the estate. Houses were gradually built from 1901 onwards when the landscape infrastructure was maturing and the estate was completed by 1925. All roads but one were curving and names given to 'floral roads' reflected their planting schemes, such as Silver Lane, Rose Walk, and The South Border. The garden aspect of the estate endures today and it remains an important example within early town planning that recognised landscape as an essential component.