EastEnders
Charles Booth, pictured above, made some rather disparaging remarks about Summerstown which always raise a smile if I choose to recite them at the start of a Walk. He published a massive seventeen...
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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.
Two Edwards
It must have been one of the most exciting things to have happened in Tooting Broadway. Its the 4th of November 1911 and thousands of people have gathered to witness Archibald Davis Dawnay, the Mayor...
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The Devil’s Wood
Very much on the northern extremity of our Summerstown orbit and rather more part of Earlsfield or Wandsworth, a trio of little streets with a Summerstown182 connection have captured my imagination...
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Platoon Sergeant
A number of the bound red collections of the St Mary’s parish magazine which have told us so much about the Summerstown182, have a dedication inked in fountain pen on the inside front cover. It says...
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Billy’s Boots
William and Frank Ibbott were two sporting lads from Huntspill Street whose football and cricketing talents were documented in the pages of the St Mary’s Church parish magazine in the pre-war years....
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Lower Smallwood
A photograph of a V.J. Day street party in 1945 has gripped the attention of all who have seen it. So many of the faces now have a name or have been recognised when its been shown on one of the...
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The Half Miler
With such a name, Robert James Govan could hardly fail to have anything but a Glaswegian connection. His father, a house painter, also Robert James Govan, was from the Springburn area of Glasgow,...
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The Farm
Thomas Knight of the Summerstown182 may never have milked a cow or driven a plough over the fields next to Burntwood Lane, but because of his Commonwealth War Grave Commission entry, he is indelibly...
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Hymns and Arias
They don’t take any chances on Himley Road. It took a bit of a bashing in the last months of the Second World War and standing guard over it on the corner of Mellison Road and pointing menacingly in...
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The Boy in the Bottle
Archibald Dutton lived at 8 Hazelhurst Road in 1911. It is long demolished, but would have been roughly where 14 storey Chillingford House is today. Next door at No10 were the Daniell and Jewell...
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Burntwood Lane
Burntwood Lane marks the northern perimeter of the St Mary’s parish boundary. The country road that the poet Edward Thomas took his bicycle down in his ‘Pursuit of Spring’ in 1913, may be shorn of...
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The Rent Collector
An altercation in Pevensey Road in April 1915, outlined in the South Western Star newspaper, paints an interesting portrait of life on the mean streets of the Fairlight in the turbulent First World...
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