Publications

Index of Past Publications 1955-2021

Copies of all the Society’s publications are available for reference at the Wandsworth
Heritage Service, Battersea Library, 265 Lavender Hill, London SW11 1JB. The service’s
contact details are: email heritage@gll.org / tel. 020 7223 2334.

The digital archive of the full run of the Wandsworth Historian from 1971-2021 is available for purchase at a modest price. For more details, please email 020neil119@gmail.com.

The Map of Georgian Wandsworth

In 1787 the significant landowner, the second Earl Spencer, commissioned the cartographer, John Corris, to draw a plan of all his holdings and rights within the parish of Wandsworth. The result is the most detailed map we have of the area in the Georgian period, with many of the parcels of land meticulously marked and all the buildings shown to a sound accuracy even in the built-up area. As part of its remit to widen people’s knowledge of Wandsworth’s past the WHS has published a careful reproduction of the original in the British Library, printed in full colour and measuring 41cm by 47cm.

Wandsworth Paper: Putney – 1851

In the mid-1970s the Wandsworth Historical Society organised a practical history-research workshop which focussed on analysing the enumerators’ local returns for the census of England held in 1851. The result was a significant insight into the social structure of the inhabitants of Putney in the mid-Victorian period, how they earned their living, how they travelled around, and how they spent their free time.Access the fully-searchable digitised copy of the original booklet below.

Wandsworth Paper: Villas and Mansions of Roehampton and Putney Heath

The Wandsworth Historical Society is committed to making its earlier publications more readily available for historical researchers right across the world. The highly significant study named above was completed by Dorian Gerhold in 1997 and is still the subject of the continuing interest.The following notes are particularly significant in the light of our approaches to renew permission to use the various images once again:

• The map on p. 4 is sourced from the collection of Dorian Gerhold, and replaces the original version which was provided by the British Library.
• It has not proved feasible to reproduce fig. 20 which originally appeared on p. 45.
• Figs 23, 24, 30, 38, 39 & 40 are reproduced ‘by permission of the London Borough of Merton’.
• Fig. 42 should now be more accurately attributed to Historic England, ref. BB83/01621.

Research Guides

In line with the Society’s commitment to make its earlier publications more readily available to enthusiasts we have created digitized versions of two definitive research guides which we first published in the 1980s.

Both of these guides are now searchable documents. Present-day readers are reminded that the names of some of the archives mentioned in them have changed since they were first published.

The Wandsworth Local History Collection (WLHC), or ‘Wandsworth Collection’, is now the Wandsworth Heritage Service, and the Greater London Record Office (GLRO) is now the London Metropolitan Archives; neither has changed its location, unlike the Surrey Record Office (now the Surrey History Centre at Woking).

The Wandsworth Heritage Service now has photocopies of relevant pages from many of the early directories, such as Pigot & Co.’s, up to 1845.

Wandsworth Paper: The Building of the Southfields Grid c.1860-1910

It was in 2003 that the Society published this highly significant study by Keith Bailey on the evolution of this Edwardian suburb in the southern part of Wandsworth. In view of the continuing interest in his paper, the WHS has decided to re-release it in digital form.