WIMBLEDON, MERTON, MITCHAM, AND THEIR MEMORIES
[Sidenote: Wimbledon]
Scarcely less interesting than the charming riverside districts of
Surrey described above is the neighbouring parish of Wimbledon, that
stretches southwards from Wandsworth, Putney, Roehampton and Barnes to
Merton and Cheam, and westwards to Kingston, the river Wandle dividing
it from Mitcham on the east. Long before the Conquest, Wimbledon
Common, that was then but a small portion of vast unenclosed wild
lands, was the scene of events that had their share in determining the
fate of southern England, and since that epoch-making event it has
again and again been associated with typical incidents of the national
life. The remains of very extensive entrenchments on its south-western
side, locally known as Bensbury, that were unfortunately almost
destroyed in 1880 by the owner of the property, prove that it was at a
very early date the scene of important military operations, but whether
these entrenchments were the work of British, Roman, or Saxon hands
there is no evidence to prove. Popular opinion, however, long since
decided that Cæsar {198} was the first occupier of the Rounds, as the
earthworks were called, and the few still existing relics will probably
always be associated with his name. Possibly, indeed, he may have
halted on the common during the campaign of B.C. 54, and even have
drank from the spring of pure water about a quarter of a mile from his
supposed camp, that is preserved from defilement by a stone casing
provided at the expense of Sir Henry Peek, who was for some time owner
of the mansion known as Wimbledon House. It is as difficult to
determine the origin of the word Wimbledon as it is to decide who was
the maker of the so-called Cæsar's Camp. It is very differently spelt
by various chroniclers, and the probability is that the two first
syllables preserve the name of an early Saxon owner of the manor, and
that the last simply means hill. In the Saxon Chronicle reference is
made to a battle that took place at Wibbandune, possibly near the
much-discussed camp, between Ceawlin, King of Wessex, and Æthelbricht,
King of Kent, in which the latter was defeated, but Wimbledon is not
mentioned in Doomsday Book, it having been one of many submanors
belonging to Mortlake. It was separated from the latter by Henry
VIII., to be bestowed upon Thomas Cromwell, who was then at the very
zenith of his prosperity, for he had fulfilled his promise that he
would make his master the richest monarch who had ever ruled over
England. He was raised to the peerage as Baron of Okeham, and almost
immediately afterwards created Earl of Essex. It was, however, but for
one brief year that he was {199} allowed to enjoy his new dignities and
possessions, and it had scarcely ended before the fickle Henry turned
against him. The once highly favoured minister was accused of treason,
and eight weeks after he became an earl he was beheaded on Tower Hill.
The manor of Wimbledon reverted to the Crown, and later it was given by
the king to Catherine Parr for her life. On the death of her
stepmother in 1547, Queen Mary bestowed it on Cardinal Pole, then only
a deacon, with whom it was popularly believed she was in love before
her marriage with Philip II. of Spain. Pole, however, never resided at
Wimbledon, and the property was taken from him before his death, which
took place the day after that of the queen, whose evil genius he had
been. Queen Elizabeth granted the manor in 1576 to Sir Christopher
Hatton, from whom it passed by purchase to Sir Thomas Cecil, son of the
great statesman Sir William Cecil, better known as Lord Burghley. The
new owner pulled down the old manor-house and replaced it by a
magnificent structure, that until its demolition early in the
eighteenth century by Sir Theodore Jansen was considered the finest
private residence near London. It was designed by John Thorpe, whose
architectural drawing for it, bearing the inscription, 'Wymbledon, an
house standing on the edge of a hie hill,' is preserved in the Soane
Museum. Queen Elizabeth was often the guest of Lord Burghley in the
house he inherited from his father, the approaches to which appear to
have been but little in keeping with its grandeur, as proved by an
entry {200} in the Kingston Churchwarden's book for 1599 recording the
payment of twenty pence for mending the ways when the queen went from
Wimbledon to Nonsuch.
Lord Burghley, who had been created Earl of Essex, before his death
left his Wimbledon property to his youngest son, Edward Cecil, who
received the title of Lord Wimbledon in 1626. The latter, who was an
eloquent writer as well as a distinguished soldier, and is included in
Horace Walpole's catalogue of royal and noble authors, died in 1638, at
the beginning of the acute stage of the conflict between autocratic and
constitutional government, and his heir sold his Wimbledon home to
Queen Henrietta Maria, who was often there with her husband and
children during the few years of happiness that remained to them. Only
a short time before the end of his troubled career, Charles I. gave
orders that some melon seeds from Spain should be planted in the
gardens, but whether this was done or not is not known. The beautiful
house and estate were sold in 1649 by the Parliamentary Commissioners
to a Mr. Baynes, from whom they were soon afterwards purchased by
General Lambert, who is said to have found great consolation for the
troubles resulting from his refusal to take the oath of allegiance to
the Protector by cultivating flowers, the tulips and gilliflowers he
raised at Wimbledon having been the finest that could be had for love
or money.
After the Restoration Charles II. gave back the Wimbledon manor-house
to his widowed mother, {201} but it was too full of sad memories for
her to care to live in it, and she sold it in 1661--the year, by the
way, of the trial of General Lambert for treason--to John Digby, Earl
of Bristol, who with the aid of the famous John Evelyn soon completely
transformed it to suit his own taste. It was in the parish church of
Wimbledon that the earl made his famous renunciation of the Roman
Catholic religion, that was described by the French ambassador, who
happened to be present, as an insolent and daring act; and it was
whilst he was living in his half-finished mansion that he narrowly
escaped arrest somewhat later when Charles II. sent messengers to
arrest him. The Earl of Bristol died at Wimbledon in 1676, and his
estate, after changing hands several times, was bought in 1717 by Sir
Theodore Jansen, one of the promoters of the luckless South Sea scheme,
who, with little reverence for the beauty and historic associations of
the house, at once began to pull it down. Before he had time to build
another he and his fellow-speculators were ruined, and the Wimbledon
estate was sold by him to Sarah Jennings, the famous Duchess of
Marlborough. She in her turn built a new and costly mansion which she
bequeathed, with the rest of the property, to her grandson, John
Spencer, to whose descendants it belonged--passing, in accordance with
the custom known as borough English, to the youngest, not the eldest
son--until 1871, when it was sold and broken up into a number of small
holdings. The house built for the duchess, in which Hannah More was
the guest, in 1786, of the Bishop of St. Asaph, was {202} burned down
in 1785, and the then owner replaced it with that still standing, known
as Wimbledon Park House, that is associated with the memory of Sir
William Paxton, the architect of the Crystal Palace, who began his
career as assistant to his brother, who was head gardener for many
years to the Cecil family.
At the present time Wimbledon, in spite of all the changes that have
taken place in its general appearance, is one of the most beautiful of
the London suburbs, and though it has lost its historic manor-house, it
retains many fine old mansions that bear witness to its aristocratic
associations. Amongst these, perhaps the finest is Eagle House, on the
Green, a noble Jacobean structure, with ten gables, built by Robert
Bell, a wealthy London merchant in the reign of James I., and occupied
for some years, from 1789, by the Right Honourable William Grenville,
the relation and colleague of William Pitt, who often visited him
there, one of the bedrooms being still named after him. A house not
far off, known as Wimbledon Lodge, was at the same time the home of the
famous philanthropist, William Wilberforce, who in his _Journal_ makes
many allusions to his happy meetings at Eagle House with William Pitt,
whom he sometimes persuaded to go to church with him.
At Chester House, another fine old mansion that faces the common, John
Horne Tooke spent the last years of his life, and died in 1812, leaving
instructions in his will that he should be buried in a mausoleum, still
preserved in the garden; but his {203} wishes were disregarded, for he
rests in the churchyard of Ealing. Near the Crooked Billet, already
referred to in connection with Thomas Cromwell, lived John Murray,
founder of the publishing house named after him, and amongst his
neighbours were William Gifford, the first editor of the _Quarterly
Review_, and James Perry, the originator of the _Morning Chronicle_.
Melrose House, on West Hill, now a home for incurables, was once the
seat of the Duke of Sutherland. Madame Goldschmidt, better known as
Jenny Lind, lived for several years in Wimbledon Park, and it was in
Wresil Lodge that the celebrated Anglo-Indian statesman, Sir Bartle
Frere, passed away.
The Parsonage of Wimbledon is a very picturesque old homestead, but
there is little of interest about the modern parish church, that has
had several predecessors, except the mortuary chapel connected with it
that was built in the early seventeenth century as a family vault by
Lord Wimbledon. There are, however, two or three noteworthy
eighteenth-century tombs in the churchyard, that also owns a memorial
to the celebrated American painter, Gilbert Stuart Newton, who died at
Chelsea in 1835.
The chief glory of Wimbledon is now, as it has been for centuries, its
breezy elevated common, that is more than a thousand acres in extent,
and with Putney Heath, Richmond Park, Ham and Sheen commons, form an
unbroken stretch of varied scenery unrivalled even in the heart of the
country for its rural charm. Peaceful as Wimbledon Common now seems,
however, it has witnessed {204} many stirring and gruesome incidents,
for it was long a favourite haunt of highwaymen and a noted place for
duels. The secluded Coombe Wood on its outskirts, beloved of Constable
and Stothard, where stands the house occupied by Lord Liverpool when he
was Prime Minister, was the chief lurking-place of those lying in wait
for unwary travellers, who were often not only robbed but murdered in
broad daylight. It was no unusual thing for the bodies of criminals to
be left hanging in chains till they rotted away near the spot where
their worst deeds were done, and in a contemporary caricature of the
duel already referred to between William Pitt and William Tierney, the
remains of the notorious Jerry Abershaw, who suffered death at
Kensington in 1735, are seen in the background dangling from a post
close to the Windmill which is still such a picturesque feature of the
common.
[Illustration: WIMBLEDON COMMON]
In 1789 occurred the encounter between Colonel Lennox, later Duke of
Richmond, and the Duke of York, second son of George III., that caused
much excitement at the time, for it was unusual for a commoner to
challenge a prince of the blood, though the latter was in this case
undoubtedly in the wrong, a fact of which he proved his sense by
refusing to fire at his antagonist, who had to be content with
discharging one bullet only that passed harmlessly through his
adversary's hair. In 1807 a duel was fought in Coombe Wood, in which
both parties were slightly wounded, between Sir Francis Burdett, the
famous Conservative statesman, and Mr. Paull, who had been one of his
agents {205} in his successful candidature for Westminster; and in 1809
a certain Mr. Payne was mortally wounded in a duel on the common with a
Mr. Clarke, who had made dishonourable proposals to his sister. More
celebrated than either of these meetings, however, was that of 1839,
when the Marquis of Londonderry met Henry Grattan, son of the famous
Irish patriot of that name, and, after allowing his opponent to fire at
him, discharged his own pistol in the air, a quiet way of proving his
contempt for the duel as a mode of settling quarrels. A year later the
future Emperor Napoleon III. challenged his fellow-countryman, Comte
Léon, to a combat on Wimbledon Common, but a dispute having arisen
between them when on the ground as to the weapons to be used, so much
delay was caused that the police appeared on the scene and arrested the
whole party, who were brought before the magistrate at Bow Street and
bound over to keep the peace. Far more serious than this fiasco was
the encounter, in the same year, between the Earl of Cardigan, later
leader of the famous charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava, and
Captain Harvey Tuckett, one of his officers, whom he had treated with
unwarrantable harshness. The latter was seriously wounded, and public
indignation against the earl was very great, but though he was tried by
his peers in 1841 he escaped punishment through a legal quibble, his
counsel having pretended that it was impossible to prove the identity
of the sufferer with the Captain Tuckett named in the indictment.
By the middle of the nineteenth century duelling {206} had quite gone
out of fashion in England; and although a few hostile meetings have
since taken place on Wimbledon Common, they have been mere farces
unworthy of serious consideration. The beautiful open space has since
then become associated with memories of a far more ennobling kind, for
it has been the scene of many a great gathering of volunteers, which
have made the name of Wimbledon known throughout the civilised world,
and have done more, perhaps, than anything else to make military
service popular in England.
It is usual to date the beginning of the great volunteer movement from
1859, when General Peel, then Minister of War, sanctioned the
acceptance by the authorities of those who offered themselves to take
part in the national defence, but the way had been long before prepared
by the formation of local associations, amongst which that of
Wimbledon, founded in 1799, was the first. A corps of cavalry and one
of infantry were quickly formed, in which all the leading gentlemen of
the parish were enrolled. The example thus set was eagerly followed,
and in 1798 George III. reviewed on Wimbledon Common a regiment more
than six hundred strong. By 1803 the volunteers numbered no less than
355,307, and there can be no doubt that had Napoleon realised the
expectations of the people of England by invasion, the self-constituted
army would have proved itself fully equal to the emergency. After the
battle of Waterloo the volunteer force was disbanded; but the spirit
which had animated it was not extinct, and when {207} some years later
a new war with France seemed imminent, a single spark was all that was
needed to kindle anew the patriotic enthusiasm of the whole nation,
which resulted in the formation of a new volunteer army, in many
respects superior to its predecessor. In June 1860 Queen Victoria
reviewed that army in Hyde Park, and a month later took place on
Wimbledon Common the inauguration of the National Rifle Association,
Her Majesty firing the first shot. From that time to 1887, when the
meetings were transferred to Bisley, the volunteers encamped on the
beautiful common every summer, representative teams from every part of
the United Kingdom and some of the colonies taking part in the various
competitions, which, with the reviews that terminated the operations,
attracted thousands of spectators. Wimbledon Common is now
comparatively deserted, but the memory of the volunteers is kept green
by the fine flagstaff, the loftiest in England, that rises up a short
distance from the windmill, and consists of the trunk of a single
Californian pine that was towed across the Atlantic by a liner, and was
the gift of a Canadian corps in acknowledgment of the hospitality
received during a visit to the camp. Now and then, as when in 1906 the
London companies of the Royal Volunteer Army Medical Corps and a party
of Electrical Royal Engineers rehearsed first aid to the wounded after
a fight supposed to have taken place in the night, the common is still
turned to account as a practising-ground, but it is at present chiefly
noted as being the headquarters of the {208} London and Scottish Golf
and the All-England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Clubs.
[Sidenote: Merton]
Within easy reach of Wimbledon are a number of villages, including
Merton, Morden, Malden, Mitcham, and Tooting, which, though they have
all recently been promoted to the doubtful dignity of becoming suburbs
of London, still retain some few relics of the days gone by when they
were secluded woodland hamlets. Of these the most important is
Merton--inseparably connected with the memory of Lord Nelson and Lady
Hamilton--the history of which can be traced back to the eighth
century, when its site was the scene of a terrible tragedy, for it was
there that in 784 the noble king of the West Saxons, Cynewulf, who was
on a visit to a lady to whom he was deeply attached, was treacherously
slain, with all his attendants, by the Ætheling Cyneheard, a crime that
was fearfully avenged the day after, when the murderer and all his
followers but one fell victims to the rage of Cynewulf's thanes.
According to some authorities, it was near the Surrey Merton that the
battle took place between the English and the Danes in 871, when King
Æthelred was wounded to death, and at which his brother, the future
King Alfred, was present; but it must be added that the balance of
evidence is in favour of that important event, which inaugurated a new
era for England, having occurred elsewhere. In any case, however, it
is certain that Merton--the name of which is supposed to signify the
town on the mere, from its vicinity to the ponds of the Wandle--was a
valuable manor at the time {209} of the Conquest, when it was the
property of King Harold. It was confiscated by William I., and was
retained by the Crown until it was bestowed by Henry I. on the
so-called Gilbert the Norman, founder of the famous priory of Merton
that was long the glory of the neighbourhood.
Originally a humble community of monks living in a small timber-built
house near a Norman church, also built by Gilbert, the new settlement
quickly attracted so many novices that it was soon decided to transfer
it to a more extensive site, and in the course of a few years a stately
structure, of which, unfortunately, but a few scanty relics remain,
rose up on the banks of the Wandle. The first stone was laid by
Gilbert the Norman in 1130, but he did not live to see the completion
of his work, for he died the same year, after having carefully secured
the property to the Augustinians. From the first the priory enjoyed
many special privileges, including that of a seat in Parliament for its
abbot and the right of sanctuary, of which Hubert de Burgh, who had
acted as Regent during the minority of Henry III., availed himself when
he was fleeing from the wrath of his ungrateful master in 1234. It was
in the spacious hall of the priory that met, two years later, the great
council of the nation that defeated the attempt of the king and pope,
who were for once inspired by a common ambition, to force upon the
people what was known as the 'Rule of the Canon Law for the
legitimisation of children born before the wedlock of their parents.'
Earls and barons alike stood firm, declaring that nothing {210} would
induce them to change the established laws of England; and it was not
until several centuries later that what became known as the Statute of
Merton was to a great extent nullified by the passing of the Legitimacy
Act of 1858.
As time went on Merton Priory became a celebrated place of education,
numbering amongst its pupils many boys who later rose to eminence,
including Thomas à Becket, who was there for some time before he was
sent to Pevensey Castle for his military training, and Walter de
Merton, who became Lord High Chancellor of England in 1261, and founded
in 1264 at the neighbouring village of Malden the college of Merton,
that was transferred in 1274 to Oxford, and enjoys the distinction of
having been the first institution in that city that was organised on
collegiate lines.
Within easy distance of London, Merton was often visited by the
reigning sovereigns, who repaid the hospitality they received from the
abbot with constant gifts of land or money, so that by the time of the
suppression of the monasteries the abbey grounds, that were enclosed by
a wall, a few portions of which are still standing, were no less than
sixty acres in extent, and its revenues amounted to more than a
thousand pounds a year. In addition to this, the priory owned many
estates in other parts of the country, with the advowsons of several
churches, but all its property was snatched away by Henry VIII., who
let the abbey on lease, but retained the manor of Merton, which
remained the property of the Crown until 1610, when it was sold {211}
by James I. to a certain Thomas Hunt, since which time it changed hands
again and again before its lands were broken up into small holdings and
built upon. Of the ancient manor-house not a trace is left, though
possibly the so-called manor farm may occupy its site, but the abbey
remained uninjured for some time longer. It had been given by Queen
Mary just before her death to the monastery of Sheen, but was reclaimed
by her successor, who granted a long lease of it to the cofferer of the
royal household, Gregory Lovell, who died at Merton in 1597; and was
buried in the parish church. In 1610 the historic building was sold to
a certain Thomas Hunt, who passed it on to his heirs in good
preservation, as proved by the fact that it was one of the strong
places fortified during the Civil War. In 1668 it became the property
of a member of the Pepys family, and its purchase by his 'Cosen Tom' is
referred to by Samuel Pepys in his _Diary_ for that year. At the
beginning of the eighteenth century the priory and chapel were still
beautiful buildings, but long before the end they had been despoiled
and converted into a calico-printing factory. Part of the materials
were used to build a mansion that occupied the site of the modern house
now called Merton Abbey, and a single Norman arch incorporated in the
factory is all that remains to bear witness to the glory of the
monastery founded by Gilbert the Norman. The railway connecting
Wimbledon and Tooting runs right across what were once the abbey
grounds; but in the portion belonging to the house referred to above
are {212} some fish-ponds that were probably used by the monks.
Fortunately the parish church of Merton, in which Lord Nelson, Sir
William and Lady Hamilton often worshipped, with its tiled roof, squat
timber tower, and octagonal spire, its Norman arch at the northern end
and Early English pillars in the nave, retains, in spite of frequent
restoration, very much the appearance that it did when first completed
early in the twelfth century. Two of the ancient lancet windows
remain, the arms of the priory in old stained glass have been worked
into the modern east window, on the south wall is a mural monument,
with kneeling effigies, to the memory of Gregory Lovell, his wife, and
their eight children, and in the nave are the hatchments of the great
families who at different times owned the manor of Merton, and also one
bearing the arms of Lord Nelson that was presented after his death by
Lady Hamilton. In the vestry is preserved the pew in which the lovers
used to sit, and in the churchyard are several quaint old tombs,
including that of the second wife of the famous bookseller, James
Luckington, who lived for some years at Merton.
Opposite to the church is an interesting Elizabethan mansion standing
well back from the road in extensive grounds, with fine entrance-gates
of wrought iron, that was long erroneously supposed to have been the
original manor-house of Merton, and close to the gates is a flight of
stone steps that are said to have been used by Lord Nelson for mounting
and dismounting when he rode to church from {213} his beloved home on
the Wandle, known as Merton Place, where he spent the happiest years of
his life, and from which he went forth never to return five weeks
before the battle of Trafalgar, in which he lost his life.
Unfortunately, absolutely no trace is now left of Merton Place, for it
was sold in 1808 by Lady Hamilton, to whom it had been bequeathed, and
its site is now occupied by a street of commonplace villas, the names
of Nelson Place and the Nelson Arms alone recalling the days when the
great naval hero was a familiar figure in the village. Opposite the
railway station, however, is a ruined castellated gate overgrown with
ivy that once gave access to the estate which Nelson and his beloved
Emma called Paradise Merton, which witnessed the closing scenes of a
romance without a parallel in history or fiction. On the improvement
of that estate large sums of money were expended, and after the
credulous or wilfully blind Sir William Hamilton had passed away, the
long disowned but deeply loved Horatia was brought to live with her
mother, her absent father betraying in his letters a deep solicitude
for her welfare, as when he begs that 'a strong netting about three
feet high may be placed round the Nile,' as he called the stream
running through the grounds, 'that the little thing may not tumble in.'
[Sidenote: Malden]
Malden, the Anglo-Saxon name of which signifies the Hill of the Cross,
has now even less that is distinctive about it than Merton, but it is
noteworthy as having been the first site of the college referred to
above, founded in 1240 by Walter de Merton, {214} who at that date
bought Malden Manor, the history of which can be traced back to the
time of the Doomsday Survey, when with that of the neighbouring
Chessington it was the property of Richard de Tonbridge. Merton
College retained its estate at Mitcham until the dissolution of the
monasteries, when Henry VIII. took 120 acres of it--now part of the
populous suburb known as Worcester Park--to add them to the grounds of
Nonsuch Palace. Later Queen Elizabeth confiscated the manors of Malden
and Chessington with the advowsons of both livings for a term of no
less than five hundred years, salving her conscience by paying a
nominal rent of forty pounds, but in the reign of her successor the
members of the college succeeded in bringing about a compromise, by the
terms of which the then owner of the lease and his heirs were allowed
to retain it for another eighty years.
The parish church of Malden, though it has been again and again
restored, still retains traces of Saxon work in the walls of the
chancel, that now serves as an aisle of the greatly enlarged building,
and in the east window are the arms of Walter de Merton and of Bishop
Ravis, who occupied the see of London in the early nineteenth century,
whilst the position occupied by the altar in the first chapel is marked
by a stone slab bearing the inscription: 'Here stood the Lord's Table
on Maeldune, the Hill of the Cross for nigh a thousand years.'
Some two miles from Merton is the still secluded village of Morden, or
the settlement on the great hill, the manor of which belonged at the
time of the {215} Conquest to the abbey of Westminster, and became the
property of the Crown on the dissolution of the monasteries. It was
granted by Edward VI. to Edward Whitchurch and Lionel Ducket, and since
then has changed hands many times. Its ancient manor-house is still
represented by a mansion known as Morden Hall, and its parish church
retains the tower of a much earlier building, whilst on its walls hang
many fine old brasses and a number of hatchments of great antiquarian
interest.
[Sidenote: Mitcham]
The extensive parish of Mitcham, that stretches away from Merton and
Morden to Beddington, Carshalton, and Croydon on the south, and on the
east to Streatham and Norwood includes one of the most beautiful
commons near London, set in a border of fields planted with lavender
bushes and sweet-smelling herbs. It is associated, moreover, with many
interesting memories, and at the time of the Conquest was an extremely
valuable property, including no less than five manors that were later
reduced to three, which changed hands so often that it is almost
impossible to trace their history. It is enough to add that Thomas
Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, owned a house at Mitcham that still
bears his name, that Sir Walter Raleigh occupied another for some time
that belonged to his wife, Elizabeth Throckmorton, and that in a
mansion now pulled down Sir Julius Cæsar received Queen Elizabeth in
1598, an honour that according to his own account cost him considerably
more than £700. On the banks of the Wandle, in a villa known as Grove
House, lived Sir Thomas More, and two {216} centuries later it was the
home of a man of a very different type, Lord Clive, who in 1774, just
before he took his own life, gave it to the great lawyer Alexander
Wedderburn, the future Lord Chancellor of England, who had defended him
at his trial. In 1789 Grove House was bought by the London banker Sir
Samuel Hoare, who often showed hospitality in it to Hannah More, the
Wilberforces and the Macaulays. Dr. Donne, the famous Dean of St.
Paul, who died in 1631, was also at one time a resident at Mitcham;
Charles Mathews, who was to make such a great reputation as a comedian,
used to ride over on his pony for a gallop on Mitcham Common when he
was at school at Clapham; and Dr. Johnson was fond of dining in the
neighbourhood when he was the guest of Mrs. Thrale at Streatham.
The original village of Mitcham, picturesquely situated on the Wandle,
that here works several mills, is now but the nucleus of a rapidly
growing town; and it is very much the same with its neighbour Tooting,
that retains little except the common, which is now its chief
distinction, to recall the days when Queen Elizabeth was the guest of
the lord of the manor, Lord Burghley, or those a century later, when
the author of _Robinson Crusoe_ lived in a little house on the road
that still bears his name and founded the conventicle now replaced by
the Defoe Presbyterian chapel. The ancient parish church of Tooting,
of which that conventicle soon became a serious rival, was pulled down
some eighty years ago to make room for a modern successor; of the
beautiful convent of the Holy Cross, that once {217} stood just without
the village, and is said to have been connected with the church by a
subterranean passage, not a trace remains; whilst a few
dignified-looking mansions with wrought-iron entrance-gates, and the
two inns known as the Castle and the Angel, are the only houses with
any claim to antiquity.
{218}