The Chelsea Monster
A few weeks ago, the ever-vigilant Chris Burge alerted me to a post on the Mitcham History Notes website. It had been written by Peter Hannah whose Aunt Annie married Ernest, the younger brother of...
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Stories
Exploring the lives and heritage of Summerstown, from the trenches of the Great War to the vibrant streets of today.
Cut and Blow
There would appear these days to be an inexhaustible supply of hairdressing salons on the main Earlsfield drag of Garratt Lane. So, it seems appropriate that one of the Summerstown182 should have a...
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Ladybird, Ladybird
A few weeks ago we spent three golden days visiting the graves and memorials of the Summerstown182 in northern France and Belgium. Some of the smaller cemeteries are very hard to find and on the...
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Carved in Stone
Anyone researching a soldier called Arthur James Mullinger Mace and coming across his record on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission database would see an intruiging message written along the...
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St Valentine’s Day Massacre
Charles Norris lived at 47 Summerstown, a fascinating address of immense historical significance. Some time before the Norris family located there, it was the site of a beer house called The Sir...
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Frederick Sizmur Buckland
Frederick Sizmur Buckland is remembered in Summerstown and Mitcham. Chris Burge’s special guest blog is the most comprehensive account of the war experience of a Summerstown182 soldier that has been...
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Artists Quarter
Around a hundred years ago, the two houses next to St Mary’s Church on Wimbledon Road, looking across towards Hazelhurst Road, were inhabited by familes of an artistic nature. Next door at No44 were...
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Zeebrugge Raid
The emergence of a photo of our Great Grandfather got me back in touch with my second cousin Patrick a few weeks ago. He lives in Dover and curiously a century and a half ago, that is where Robert...
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Lavender and Gunpowder
It was the summer of 1898 and a boy called Percy Frederick Charles Harrison was born into a sweetly-scented world of lavender in the town of Mitcham, about two miles south of Tooting. He was the son...
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Young Offender
On the same day that my eleven year old son stepped out into the world on his first day at secondary school, I learned of a boy not much older from just around the corner who was sent to a very...
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St Barnabas, Southfields
One of my abiding memories of my Grandad, who passed away before my seventh birthday, was the sweet fuzzy aroma of tobacco that accompanied him. He was an habitual pipe smoker, always fiddling around...
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Lost Streets
Last week I spent some time visiting the town of Enniskillen where I once went to school. Thirty years ago, on my way home to the bus station, I would have passed an area which had recently been...
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