Vol 2. Chapter 1 - The Wasteland

My mother's maiden name was "Walters".  The earliest recorded “Walters” ancestor is Charles Walters, born in 1789, the same year as the French Revolution. Charles was born in the small village of Peasemore in Berkshire, just off the A34 north of Junction 13 of the M4. (It is also David Cameron’s birthplace)  It was here that Charles married his wife, Elizabeth, and also where his eldest son, Charles Jnr was born in 1815. Charles was, by profession, a gardener.  One can assume that Charles has a strong Berkshire accent: he pronounced his name “Watters” and this is what appears on early records.

Sometime between 1815 and 1840 Charles and his family left the picturesque village of Peasemore to pursue his gardening career in rural Surrey – little suspecting that within a 100 years Vauxhall would become an inner-city suburb.

In 1841 Charles and his family are living at “The Cottage on the Waste”,  Mawby place: described as a ¼ of a mile from the Three Goats’ Heads pub on Wandsworth Road. As the name suggests, the cottage was built of two acres of wasteland on the South Lambeth Road, part of the Vauxhall Manor estate.

The whole area at the time was open country: “Vauxhall Common”. It was here that “Persons from London lived in genteel houses which fronted the common.” The owners of the Wasteland wanted to use it as a  building plot. However, the people from London in their genteel houses objected vehemently, so much so that they raised a subscription to enclose the land with posts and rails, in order to prevent building and to maintain its rural character.  (No in my back yard syndrome!)

The enclosed land was considered to be at danger from squatters, and so a compromise was reached whereby the Wasteland could be developed but only on the condition that a single gardener’s cottage could be built and the land cultivated only as a cottage garden.
And so, my great, great, great grandfather Charles Walters, became the tenant and cultivated the Wasteland.

Although Mawby Place no longer exists, Mawbey Street does. And strangely, it is only 3 minutes’ walk from where, 100 years later, my grandmother would live: 98 Wilcox Road.

Charles’ family continue to grow during these years.

John – born 1826

Mary Ann – born 1826

Martha – born 1831

Louisa – born 1833

Harriet – born 1835

Louisa A – born 1835

By 1851, Charles had left The Wasteland and had moved to the up and coming fashionable district of, “The Paragon” in the village of Streatham. (Now South London). The Paragon was a development of twenty stucco style villas, planned to be the main feature of the newly designed residential area of Streatham Place. Charles became the gardener for Mr Zacchaeus and Lady Mary Hunter. Charles’ daughter also joined the domestic staff of No. 7 The Paragon.

By 1861, Charles had moved back to the Wasteland Area, living less than 3 minutes’ walk away at 8b Simpson Street, (Now Davidson Gardens, just off the bottom end of Wilcox Road.) At the age of 71, Charles was still employed as a gardener.  The area was known for its market gardens, and Vauxhall Market Garden was next door to Simpson Street. 

Eventually, the Market Garden succumbed to the growing urbanisation of the area  and became  Luscombe Street and Dawlish Street, streets where my father lived in the 1920’s / 30’s. These Streets were in turn demolished after WW2 and replaced by Basil House, where my parents, my sister, Irene and I live in the mid 1950s.

Charles died sometime between 1861 and 1871

Coming soon......Life in Brixton