It is from a long-demolished 1860s mansion called ‘Earlsfield’ just south of Allfarthing Lane that the suburb gets its name.
The Leather Bottle Photo © Photographer Neil Robson
In those days the whole area was an uninhabited stretch of open country, apart from the hamlet of Garratt to the south, famous in the eighteenth century for the bizarre political burlesque of the Election of the Mayor of Garratt which took place near the Leather Bottle.
Earlsfield finally started growing in the 1880s. The railway came in 1884, and in 1885 a vast workhouse was established on Swaffield Road. By 1900 developers had covered practically the whole area north of the station with terraced housing. In the years just after the First World War, Wandsworth Borough Council created the Magdalen Park Estate between Swaby Road and Openview. Nowadays, Earlsfield is a commuter suburb with little industry, though it contains a stretch of attractive restaurants and bars near the station.
