Goodbye to Wandsworth – 1990: The final post on my walk on Sunday 4th March 1990 which had begun at Clapham Junction in Battersea with St John’s Road & East Hill, Battersea – 1990. The previous post on this was walk was Point Pleasant and the Thames.
It wasn’t of course the last time I went to Wandsworth – I was even back there a couple of weeks ago, walking through the same areas, though much of it now hardly recognisable.
The school building is locally listed and its address is 5 Merton Road, but this is the view from Broomhill Road.
On a second image I made of this building I can just about make out the inscriptions on the frontage as at left ‘Erected 1573, Enlarged 1685 and on the right ‘Repaired 1809 – 31, Rebuilt 1882’. You can read all four plaques lower on the building on the London Remembers site.
This is Wandsworth Chapel and possibly the site was first used by Huguenots, though perhaps only rather later than this. Another plaque lower down mentions a Dutch congregation but from 1713-87 this was the ‘French Church.’ Later from 1809 it was Congregational and a plaque states they continued to use it for mission work until 1939 after moving to a new church on East Hill in 1860. Its history reflects the many immigrants who settled in Wandsworth and set up industries along the Wandle using its water and the power it could generate.
The current building with a hall which could hold 500 people opened in 1883 and is locally listed. Since housing the London Theatre School it became the National Opera Studio.
Pizza Delivery began in the UK in the mid-1980s, but back in 1990 you had to phone for a pizza, with on-line ordering only becoming widespread in the late 1990s. It was still fairly unusual in 1990 and HIPPO PIZZA with this row of five scooters ready and waiting for a call was something of a pioneer.
‘Welcome, Please Drive In’ for a ‘Guaranteed Complete Clean’. At at right someone sits waiting. There is still a ‘HAND CAR WASH’ here on the High Street.
I walked up Ram Street again to Armoury Way and took a few more pictures of the gas holder – which I’ve written more about in earlier posts about this walk.
I think I then looked at my watch and hurried to Wandsworth Town Station taking no more pictures to catch a train rather than have to wait another half hour for the next one.
Finally, here is just one picture from the area I made on my last visit in April 2026, looking across where Bell Lane Creek and the River Wandle join. On ‘The Spit’ is a sculpture, ‘Sail’, by Sophie Horton placed there in 2003, financed by the Wandsworth Challenge Partnership. It was inspired by the sail of a dinghy, though I don’t think these have ever sailed up here. But perhaps in the new Wandle Riverside they will.
The flats are part of a new development on the former site of the Wandsworth Gasworks. And where I was standing to take this picture where there is now a riverside path leading to the River Thames was, back in 1990, part of the Shell Oil Terminal.
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