History: Building Raynes Park

Rebuilding Raynes Park


The main Blitz on London began on 7th September 1940, but Merton and Morden suffered an earlier raid on 16th August. In the late afternoon German planes attacked New Malden, killing a lot of people at the station. In fact more than one-third of the deaths by enemy action in New Malden throughout the War occurred in this raid. The planes then continued up the line of the Kingston Road killing a further 24 people in Merton before the attack ended. In those early days the Luftwaffe used a large number of small bombs which caused casualties over a wide area but not much severe structural damage.

85 more people were killed in Merton and Morden during the main Blitz. A total of 30,000 people were killed at that time but mostly in Inner London and the eastern half of the city.

Much of the damage to Merton and Morden was caused during June, July and August 1944 when the flying bombs were launched from France. Most landed in an arc roughly along the line of the South Circular Road or the boundary between Fare Zones 2 and 3 but the V1 was a very effective psychological weapon as everyone under the flight path had to listen to the motor. When it stopped people had about twelve seconds to get under cover. Consequently people living in Morden. Sutton, Epsom, Croydon and points east were under constant strain for 80 days as the V1s came continually, day and night, and though most passed over, 35 did not and fell on Merton and Morden. Eight of these fell in the Association's area.

The amount of open space in the area was an advantage as almost one half the bombs did not cause death or serious injury. The first to arrive, three days into the attack, fell on the King's College School playing field, roughly on the principal cricket square. The pavilion survived, although it burned down just over twenty years later.

The second fell near the junction of Belmont Avenue and Burlington Road and the third near the railway bridge over West Barnes Lane.

The next five had dreadful consequences. On the night of 22nd/23rd July, one fell in Elm Walk and the next night one fell at the Bushey Road end of Chestnut Road. That area was hit again on 14th August when a large number of houses were destroyed in Vernon Avenue and Carlton Park Avenue. In these three cases it is obvious where the bombs landed. There were two other incidents where people died, one hit Cavendish Avenue and, right at the very end of the V1 campaign, another at the northern end of Adela Avenue and Phyllis Avenue. That was the last bomb to hit the area. The V2 attacks began nine days later but as these were fired at maximum range from Holland nearly all landed in the eastern half of London and none in Merton and Morden or Wimbledon, Mitcham, Sutton and Cheam, Maiden and Coombe or Epsom and Ewell.

Apart from the psychological strain on the people, the need to repair the damage was a major problem for the Government. Each V1 landing in a densely built up area like Vernon Avenue would demolish on average six houses outright with another six so badly damaged that they would have to be demolished subsequently. The next category damage was sub-divided into two classes: what could be repaired during the war and what would have to wait till afterwards. D damage was less but meant that a house was not wind or watertight. Breakage of less than 10% of the windows in a dwelling was not even recorded. Each V1 could damage up to 400 houses. In East London a V2 with the same one ton warhead - but the added kinetic shock of seven tons of metal hitting the ground at twice the speed of sound - could damage over 1000 houses.

By September, even with factories working flat out the reserve stocks of glass, plasterboard and roofing tiles had been exhausted in south east England, and the winter of 1944/45 was to be one of the hardest of the century.

The Government allocated each district to a large builder with the necessary administrative staff to co-ordinate repair in the right priority. Gleesons were responsible for Merton and Morden. Their offices were just beyond the District boundary and though they had not built any houses in the District (though many off Gander Green Lane) they had built the barracks on Stonecot Hill and Morden Farm School just before the outbreak of war.

Somehow people coped. Over 100,000 prefabs were ordered (which Local Authorities could ask for). Merton and Morden did not ask for any, though Wimbledon and Mitcham did, and West Ham requested 2,000.

Wandsworth put prefabs on over 100 bombed sites. They could be connected to the existing infrastructure comparatively easily. Some were put up before the war ended and a few paid for the price for this anticipation such as the ones in Nutwell Street, Tooting (behind the Gala Bingo ex-Granada in Mitcham Road) which were wrecked by one of the few V2s to land in south west London.

Merton and Morden had the benefit of unfinished housing estates and builders like Wates and Crouch who were still in business. I can intrude my personal testimony here. I came to Morden at the beginning of 1950 from the ridge that is Streatham Hill on one side and Tulse Hill on the other, so as a small boy I was well acquainted with the appearance of a bombed site, universally pronounced by me and my coevals as 'bomsite'. I saw no sign of any bomb damage in Morden and the only time I recall a mention of bombing in Morden was when a friend born in Morden, referred to a house in Seymour Avenue as the one where the bomb had fallen. That would have been at the junction of Seymour Avenue and Cleveland Rise but in five years all evidence of bombing had gone and the affected houses were indistinguishable from their neighbours.

In Elm Walk, though, Blay had finished his estate and as the shortage of timber was as bad after the Second World War as after the First, the new houses are of a simpler appearance than the ones that were destroyed. When Harold Macmillan was made Minister of Housing in 1951 his Ministry began the search for a house that could be built without timber. He called it 'the boneless wonder'.

Technical advances since the 1920s included pre-stressed concrete rafters and cast concrete staircases. The first house without timber (apart from the base for the fusebox) was opened in Basingstoke in April 1953 but by then the shortage of material resources was easing. In Chestnut Road and Vernon Avenue it was impossible to reproduce the old Edwardian houses. The claypits that produced the London stock bricks were worked out and there was no time or money for features like ridge tiles or stained glass.

I think I've 'shot my bolt on what I can say about building in the first half of the 20th Century in the Association's area, but I hope what you have read has proved interesting.

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