Clapham Common
| Clapham Common | |
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Clapham Common
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| Type | Public park (previously common land) |
| Location | Clapham |
| Coordinates | 51°27′28″N 0°08′58″W / 51.4578°N 0.1494°WCoordinates: 51°27′28″N 0°08′58″W / 51.4578°N 0.1494°W |
| Area | 220 acres (0.89 km2) |
| Operated by | Lambeth London Borough Council |
| Open | All year |
| Public transit access | Clapham Common and Clapham South |
Clapham Common is a large triangular urban park in Clapham, south London. Originally common land for the parishes of Battersea and Clapham, it was converted to parkland under the terms of the Metropolitan Commons Act 1878. It is 220 acres (89 hectares) of green space, with three ponds and a Victorian bandstand. It is overlooked by large Georgian and Victorian mansions, and nearby Clapham Old Town.
Holy Trinity Clapham, an 18th-century Georgian church overlooking the park, is important in the history of the evangelical Clapham Sect. Half of the park is within the London Borough of Wandsworth and half within the London Borough of Lambeth.
Originally common land for the parishes of Battersea and Clapham, William Hewer was among the early Londoners to build adjacent to it. Samuel Pepys, the diarist, died at Hewer's house in 1703. The land was drained in the 1760s, and from the 1790s onwards fine houses were built around the common as fashionable dwellings for wealthy business people in what was then a village detached from metropolitan London. Some later residents were members of the Clapham Sect of evangelical reformers, including Lord Teignmouth and Henry Thornton, the banker and abolitionist.
J. M. W. Turner painted "View on Clapham Common" between 1800 and 1805, showing that even though the common had been drained, it still remained "quite a wild place".
The common was converted to parkland under the terms of the Metropolitan Commons Act in 1878. As London expanded in the 19th century, Clapham was absorbed into the capital, with most of the remaining palatial or agricultural estates replaced with terraced housing by the early 1900s. During World War II, storage bunkers were built on the Battersea Rise side of the common; two mounds remain.
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