Southfields


Google Street View of Southfields

You can drag the Street View & Map with your mouse, and double-click to zoom.
View Larger Map


Location: 1 Standen Road, London, England, United Kingdom.

Southfields:
Southfields is a suburban district in the London Borough of Wandsworth, England, situated 5.6 miles (9 km) south-west of Charing Cross. Southfields is located partly in the SW18 postcode area and partly in SW19.

History of Southfields:
The history of Southfields has been researched and documented in Neil Robson's 1999 book "Roomy Villas". Until the late 19th century Southfields was still fields, situated between the more developed villages of Wimbledon and Putney. Several of the former pathways through the fields form the routes of parts of today's road system, in particular Wimbledon Park Road and its continuation through Southfields Passage, which was the field path from Wimbledon to Wandsworth, Kimber Road and The Baulk, both of which were field paths and can be seen on old maps of the area. When the District & London & South Western Railway from Wimbledon to Putney Bridge opened in June 1889, the area started to take off, with the first school opening a year later on Merton Road, another of the main thoroughfares that were formerly paths through fields.

The main residential area of Southfields is "The Grid". "The Grid" is a series of parallel roads that are crossed at right angles by a series of parallel streets - so named because of the grid layout of the streets. The roads run from Replingham Road, in the north to Revelstoke Road, in the south, and the streets run from Elsenham Street, in the west, to Astonville Street (although Merton Road to the east of Astonville is the border of "The Grid"). "The Grid" consists almost entirely of Edwardian terrace houses, some of which have been converted into flats in the past, though conversions are no longer permitted on The Grid owing to a change in policy by Wandsworth Borough Council. These Victorian terraced houses were built at the same time as the bordering terraced housing Wimbledon Park and the avenues to the south of The Grid originally had the same names as the streets in Southfields that led to them.

In 1904, the Frame Foods babyfood company opened its factory in Standen Road. The building is in a distinctive art nouveau style, with green ceramic tiles, and the slogan 'Nourish and Flourish' on the exterior. The building has now been coverted into flats. Standen Road was also the home of the Ault & Wiborg printing ink factory. [2] The building on the corner of Kimber Road and Merton Road once housed the HP Sauce factory, until its takeover by Heinz.

In 1926, Southfields became home to London's first Mosque. The Fazl Mosque also known as the London Mosque was built by the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community and presently serves as the international headquarters of the community.

A restrictive covenant or covenants at one time prevented any pubs from being built in the Southfields "Grid" area. However, in the 1990s, the covenants were apparently judged either to be ineffective or non-existent and two pubs were opened in adjoining premises on the south side of Replingham Road (one since closed, in late 2011).