Wandsworth’s history has been shaped by its position on the Wandle and the Thames and on a major east-west road (probably of Roman origin).
Wandsworth Town Hall Photo © Photographer Sue Cutler
The Wandle provided power for mills, which were numerous by 1086. At first they were usually flour mills, but from the seventeenth century new uses were found – iron working, copper working, gunpowder making, leather working and oil pressing. The Wandle’s abundant clean water was used by the dyeing, bleaching and calico printing industries, and other industries were brewing, malting, distilling, chemicals and hatmaking. The Ram Brewery existed by 1576 and closed in 2006.
From the 1680s there was an important community of French Protestants, or Huguenots. The Surrey Iron Railway, from Wandsworth to Croydon, opened in 1802, run by the first railway company in the world, but closed in 1846. A station on the Richmond Railway opened near the current Wandsworth Town site in the same year. Wandsworth Prison opened in 1851.
Suburban development accelerated in the 1860s and 1870s, and spread southwards. The twentieth century contributed King George’s Park, Council estates, the one-way system, the Wandsworth Shopping Centre and the first of the riverside flats.
