I was born at the Nelson Hospital just opposite, my school was just up the road behind the hospital (albeit I 'disappeared' to Cologne for seven plus years in December 1948). That was the land that was originally John Innes horticultural laboratories and gardens. Thus John Innes Park and the Rutlish school he grounded. Anyway, the Edgar Lustgarten mysteries were all made there and the park often appeared in open air scenes. Knew it all well.
The pub... The Emma Hamilton, a very undistinguished house, at Wimbledon Chase closed about two years ago. But yes, 3 or 4 minutes walk from the old studios. Pubs: The Nelson Arms is where the gate to where Nelson's Merton Place stood, but the actual house site is nearly half a mile on to High Path. A classmate lived in Nelson's gardener's cottage, long since demolished. That wasteland that is whatever now but in my day was Merton Board Mills was opened by William Morris whose house stood at the pub adjoining where the bus station is or was in its original form. His neighbour was Edmund Littler who began what is now Liberty & Co. In the same area there are abundant bits of Roman ruin, being on Stane Street of course.The Grove, by S Wimbledon tube is the other end of the estate of Merton Place. The Kings Head, part of which was Morris's house, a decade or so gone after being there since 1500 and something, had a medieval licence for ale brewing from the Priory, originally for the monks, etc, and was one of the few that continued to do so until at least the mid-1970s, sadly before the new wave in local brews arose.
Then there was the Surrey Iron Railway from Wandsworth to Croydon, horse drawn but considered to have been the first long distance railway in the world that set the gauge and sleeper spacing that are the basis of the worldwide standard today that the Nelsons and Mertons (Horatio's brother's titles and thus the lordships on both tracks before Lippything got a sniff in) invested heavily in. Nicholas Breakspear, the only English pope, was born locally and educated at the Priory as too Thomas Becket studied there. Walter de Merton, who founded the Oxford College of the same name, was a local lad. David Garrick and Richard Brinsley Sheridan were both born at the same house there.
The closest type to its boredship of today I can think of locally is Hotham who had the distiction of developing Bognor Regis and was knighted for that, probably one of the most meaningless, glib seaside towns ever. Like some contemporary chaps then...
It is a very history rich area, completely destroyed generally. My sister still lives there in, extraordinarily, Rutlish Road where the school first stood when Innes donated the land and most of the rest of the area was still a garden suburb with wide, straight roads with houses designed by H G Quartermain who was the finest architect in the world in his day and lived in the area.
Somewhere, packed away, I have several area histories bought well before I went to Cambridge. But let me not bore you rigid or else I will search for books and then you've had it...
