Movement of Jah People
Persistent rumours have abounded in SW17 circles over the past few years that Bob Marley spent some time in Tooting. He laid down some grooves at the recording studio above the Mixed Blessings Bakery...
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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.
A Cleaner Tooting
Joseph Frederick Thomas Lucas was born in Willesden at the dawn of the twentieth century into an age of optimism. A few years later his family came to live in Tooting in the early years of the reign...
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Bob Sadler’s Plaque
Between 1853 and 1864 there was an extraordinary athletics venue just off Garratt Lane. This was still largely an area of fields and farms adjacent to the small mill communities of Garratt and...
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The Daily Grind
Trying to envisage the world inhabited by the Summerstown182 families is sometimes very difficult. This was the late Victorian age of industry when polluted over-worked cities were choking many of...
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The Greatest
The rather immodestly titled GREATEST TOOTING TOUR IN HISTORY, part of this year’s very successful Tootopia Festival had a lot of hype to live up to, but boy did it rise to the occasion. It always...
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Scarlet and Blue
One of the most delightful aspects of the Summerstown182 project has been all the connections we have made over the past three years. One of these has been with the Royal Hospital in Chelsea. We’ve...
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The Iron Man
Whilst preparing for the ‘Industry of Garratt Lane’ Walk in June, I spent a lot of time on the Wandsworth section of this historic route, just up a bit from Southside, near the Wendelsworth Estate...
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Ambulance Man
Having just written up the story of Joe Wyler recently it was time to tackle the other 1930 addition on the St Mary’s Church war memorial, the man in the bottom right corner, Albert Frederick Brown....
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The Lost Cornershops
One of the names on the Summerstown war memorial really caused us a few problems but he’s been worth the wait. For three years we thought ‘F Townsend’ was a Canadian soldier with an Earlsfield...
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Mark Archer’s Cabbage
A field of splendid king-size red cabbages adjoins Pont du Hem Cemetery on the long straight road between Estaires and Neuve Chapelle. When we visited Mark Archer and Andrew Meikle in October 2015...
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The Gilbey Road 137
Since getting my hands on those 1918 ‘Absent Voters’ lists, Gilbey Road in Tooting has fascinated me. Arrowing directly down to Sainsburys and Tooting Broadway from Gambole Road, it looks pretty much...
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X Beach
It feels like a very long time ago when we were last on Fountain Road and it was all about Ted Foster and his exploits at Villers-Plouich. Just a few doors away from him was a house where darkness...
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