Merton, Surrey

Merton
Surrey
Location
Grid reference:	TQ255695
Location:	51°24’38"N, 0°11’49"W
Data
Local Government
Council:	Merton

Merton is a town of Surrey buried deep now within the metropolitan conurbation. It is within the Brixton Hundred; the northwest of the county. Merton is contiguous with the towns around it; Wimbledon to the north, Mitcham to the east, Morden to the south and Kingston upon Thames to the west.

The name of Merton dates back at least to the 7th century when documents record its use. The name Mærantun is usually translated as "Farm by the Pond" or "Mæra's farmstead".

Parish church

The parish church is St Mary's in Merton Park, a 12th century church.

History

Early history

The village of Merton was located on the Roman road, Stane Street, which connected London to Chichester. Locally, the road ran in a direct line from the current Colliers Wood High Street to London Road, Morden, crossing what is now the area of industrial estates.

Merton appears in Domesday Book of 1086 as Meretone. It was held by the King. Its Domesday assets were: 20 hides; 1 church, 2 mills worth £3, 21 ploughs, 12 acres of meadow, woodland worth 80 hogs. It rendered £43 also 18s 2d from 16 houses in Southwark.

Merton Abbey or Priory was founded by Gilbert Norman in 1114 on a site close to present day location of the Sainsbury's store. In 1117 it became an Augustinian establishment and developed a high reputation for scholarship. It is believed to have been the birthplace of Walter de Merton, founder of Merton College, Oxford. In 1235, it was the location of Henry III's negotiations with his Barons for the Statute of Merton. The Abbey also educated of Thomas Becket and Nicholas Breakspear, the only English Pope.

It is believed that in 1496 a hospice for travellers was erected opposite the site of Sainsbury's store.

Merton Abbey was closed in 1538 during the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Its buildings were dismantled and the materials removed for re-use elsewhere. An inn was built there in 1594 and beer was sold there from that date until 2004, when the King's Head, Merton was finally closed. The existing building dates only from 1931, but it has been designated as a Local Listed Building.

17th and 18th centuries

Merton Place, copperplate, 18th century

The River Wandle flowing north towards Wandsworth, had for centuries driven watermills and provided water for a number of industrial processes. In the 1660s a silk mill was in operation at Merton Abbey and the Jacob family was operating a fabric bleaching ground close by - a process requiring large quantities of water. The name remained associated with the locality as two hundred years later, Stanford's 1862 Library Map of London and its Suburbs , shows Jacob's Green at the junction of what are now Christchurch Road and Western Road.

Textiles became the established industry in the area in the 18th century with calico printing beginning in the 1720s.

In 1764, merchant Richard Hotham a member of the East India Company purchased Moat House Farm, a property to the south of Merton High Street. He began developing the property, enlarging the house and renaming it "Merton Place". He first leased then later sold the house to one of the partners in a local calico works, Charles Greaves.

Hotham next built another house, to the north-west of the junction of Kingston Road and Morden Road. This he called "Hotham House" (later "Merton Grove") and it remained in his possession until his death in 1799.

19th century

Admiral Nelson

Despite the industrial development along the Wandle, Merton was, at the beginning of the 19th century, still primarily a rural farming community. The population numbered just 813 residents scattered across the entire parish.

In 1803, the Surrey Iron Railway opened between Wandsworth and Croydon following the shallow Wandle valley and passing through Merton and Mitcham to the south. Although horse-drawn, the railway provided a freight service for the industries along the river to send their goods up to wharves on the Thames and can be considered to be the first long distance railway in the world. From Merton High Street the railway ran along the route of Christchurch Road before turning to a more south-westerly route just before Mitcham tram stop.

In 1802, Merton's most famous resident, Admiral Horatio Nelson, bought Merton Place from the widow of Charles Greaves with its large estate, for £9,000. Nelson expanded the estate with the purchase of additional land south of his house until his Merton property covered most of the area west of the Wandle and north of Morden Hall Park and also included the whole of the area between Merton Road, South Park Road and Haydons Road. Between trips to sea, Nelson lived at Merton Place with his mistress, Emma Hamilton, and her husband Sir William Hamilton, although Sir William died at his London house in 1803.

Nelson had but a short time to enjoy his new home before being called away to confront Villeneuve and the Franco-Spanish fleet, whence he never returned, falling at his greatest victory, at the Battle of Trafalgar in October 1805. In recognition of Nelson's success and sacrifice at Trafalgar his elder brother was made Earl Nelson and Viscount Merton in November 1805.

Following Nelson's death, Emma Hamilton fell into debt and despite help from friends was unable to maintain Merton Place. The house was demolished in 1821 and the estate lands were sold off in parcels over the following years. The part of the Merton Place estate immediately south of the High Street was developed as small scale housing and became known as Nelson's Fields. North of the High Street the land remained undeveloped until the end of the century.

Competition from the newer, steam-powered railways caused the closure of the Surrey Iron Railway in 1846. Part of the route was later re-used by the Wimbledon and Croydon Railway when it opened in 1855 through Merton, Morden and Mitcham.

In the 1860s, a flour works sat at the junction of Bygrove Road and Wandle Bank and there was a copper rolling mill on Merton High Street where later the Merton Board Mills would be built. This was in the possession of James Shears and Sons by 1815 and remained in their possession until at least 1867. Further south, the Merton Abbey Mills complex had developed each side of the river on land adjacent to Merton Abbey House.

In 1868, the Tooting, Merton and Wimbledon Railway (TM&WR) opened a branch line from the Wimbledon and Croydon Railway between Merton Park station (now Merton Park tram stop) and Tooting Junction station (now Tooting station). Cutting through Nelson's former estate and the site of Merton Abbey, Merton Abbey station was constructed to the south of Station Road to serve the industrial complex there. William Shears, a member of the Shears family was one of the directors of this company.

Continuing the long association of Merton with textile printing, Arts and Crafts designer William Morris opened a works at Merton Abbey Mills in 1881. Close by, the firm of Edmund Littler was known for its high quality printing and was by the 1890s sending its entire output to Liberty & Co in Regent Street. Liberty & Co subsequently took the works at Merton over from Littler.

Gradually, the character of the area was changing as industry developed further around the Wandle and residential development began in the late Victorian period north of the High Street and along Kingston Road and in Merton Park.

20th century

Following the earlier lead of neighbouring Wimbledon, Merton underwent a transformation in the first two decades of the 20th century that saw its fields developed from east to west. Between 1901 and 1921 the parish's population nearly quadrupled from 4,510 to 16,177.

Hotham's Merton Grove House survived until the beginning of the 20th century but had been demolished and redeveloped for housing by 1913. The Grove Tavern pub on the opposite side of Kingston Road remembers the name.

Growth was stimulated and assisted by the arrival of trams in Merton High Street in the first decade of the century and the opening of a new bus garage at the east end of Merton High Street in 1913. The combination of tram services and the extension of the Underground Electric Railways Company of London's City & South London Railway through Colliers Wood and South Wimbledon to Morden in 1926 destroyed demand for passenger services on the Merton Abbey branch line and these were ended in 1929. Goods operations continued until 1975 when the line was closed and tracks removed.

Liberty took over Morris & Co. in 1904 and continued to operate the Merton Abbey Mills until 1972. From the 1930s, extensive industrial estates were laid out from Lombard Road on the southern part of the former Merton Place estate between Morden Road and Phipps Bridge.

The section of the TM&WR route east of Morden Road was used to construct Merantun Way (A24) in the early 1990s. The road was built to relieve traffic congestion on Merton High Street and was originally planned to continue to the west, along the route of the defunct railway to Kingston Road, with a flyover across Morden Road. This section of the route was never constructed although the space between the carriageways where Merantun Road meets Morden Road provides the space for a flyover bridge to be constructed.

During the 20th century, the waters of the Wandle became less important to the industries remaining in the Merton Abbey complex and, in the 1980s and 1990s, the majority of these closed down or moved elsewhere. The Sainsbury's Savacentre occupies part of the site and the Mill buildings were refurbished and developed as a popular heritage and craft centre. The Colour House, where Liberty dyed fabric, was opened as a theatre in 1995. The ruined Chapterhouse of the Abbey was also used as a venue for several theatrical performances in the late 1990s.

When automatic telephone exchanges were introduced in the UK, the code for the Merton and South Wimbledon telephone exchange was set as 542 and used the mnemonic "LIBerty", based on the numbers on a telephone to which the letters are assigned; a mnemonic derived from the Liberty fabric works. The use of letter codes was dropped in the late 1960s.

Heritage

A small memorial exists on the site of Merton Place. Other commemorations of Nelson's association with the parish are the Nelson Hospital on Kingston Road and the "Emma Hamilton" public house at Wimbledon Chase. The Nelson Trading Estate off Morden Road and Hamilton, Hardy, Nelson, Victory and Trafalgar Roads, off Merton High Street, are all built on land once part of the Merton Place estate.

Nelson's and Emma's pew remains in the parish church of St Mary the Virgin and on the wall of the north aisle of the church are the funeral hatchments of both Nelson and Sir William Hamilton. Outside the church, on Church Path, are "Nelson's Steps" (now somewhat overgrown) reputedly used by Nelson to mount his horse.

Much of this and the surrounding area are now a conservation area.

Construction works in the Merton Abbey area including those for Merantun Way have revealed remains of Merton Priory which have been protected and preserved where possible. Further archaeological excavations are planned.

Outside links

• St Mary the Virgin, Merton Park
• British Library Collect Britain archive
  • A View of Merton Church in the County of Surrey
  • The North East View of Merton Church, Surry, 7 Miles from London
  • The South West View of Merton Church, Surry, 7 miles from London
• Merton Abbey Mills