Sutton Common is the name of former common land and a district and neighbourhood located in Sutton, London. The area is mostly located within the London Borough of Sutton, with some of the streets to the north and west of Sutton Common Park adjoining Lower Morden and Morden within the London Borough of Merton. Much of the area is taken up by the large Kimpton Park commercial and industrial estate, adjoining the A217 (Oldfields Road). It is served by Sutton Common railway station. The area to the south and east of Oldfields Road uses an SM1 postcode and the area to the north and west uses SM3.
The borders of the area are generally regarded to be the main Pyl Brook stream to the south, bordering West Sutton and North Cheam; the East Pyl Brook to the north where it borders Rosehill and St Helier; Benhilton to the east; and Lower Morden and Morden Park to the west. Sutton Common is within the Stonecot and Sutton North wards of Sutton Council. What remains of the former common can be found at Sutton Green, Sutton Common Park, Reigate Avenue Recreation Ground, Hamilton Avenue Recreation Ground, Thomas Wall Park in Rosehill, and Rosehill Park East and West.
History
Origin as common land
The original Sutton Common was, as the name suggests, common land including Oldfields Farm to the east, located at what is now Rosehill, and Stonecot Hill to the west, through which ran the Roman road from London to Chichester known as Stane Street and which is now the modern A24. Before the process of enclosure began, the common was known as "Sutton Heath" and is likely to have covered an area as far north and east as Morden (then located much further to the south than it is now, around St Lawrence Church), Mitcham and the banks of the River Wandle, approximately where Benhilton and St. Helier are now. The land was not especially productive for agriculture on account of its heavy clay content and so it was mostly used by local people for grazing animals and to cut peat, turf and timber for fuel.
The exact extent of Sutton Heath or Common and who held the manorial rights to it seems to have been a matter for heated debate. In 1408 there was a serious dispute between the Abbot of Chertsey and Nicholas Carew, lord of the manor of Carshalton:
The judgment was, that the Abbot and Nicholas should have common lordship to an area defined. The claim of Nicholas Carew may have been based upon an agreement in 1232, in which an entry mentions a Final Concord between the Prior of Merton and Abbot of Chertsey: "Common of pasture in Sutton up to a ditch called Middildich...the Prior and his successors shall have common in Sutton whenever the men of Kersaulton have it."
16th to 18th centuries
During the early modern period, Stane Street was alive with traffic of the greatest importance. Henry VIII, circa 1538–1540, took 3,050 tonnes of stone from the despoiled Merton Priory to build Nonsuch Palace: it was carted along Sutton's boundary at a cost of twopence per mile. In 1643, during the English Civil War, Royalist troops passed along the road in retreat, and three of their soldiers are buried in the churchyard of St Dunstan's, Cheam. In 1831 Ewell Fair had 30,000 Downs sheep on sale; large flocks would travel along the road to London markets.
By the 18th century, the main Sutton Common area was focused on the plateau and the old highway from London to Sutton where Sutton Common Road is today, between Stonecot Hill and Angel Hill. Well into the 19th century the landscape would have been contiguous with other commons nearby like Mitcham Common and Thornton Heath to the east, Merton Common to the north and Cheam Common to the west, if one included some of the privately farmed fields between them.
Like many other Surrey commons and heaths, during the 17th century the area became associated with highwaymen, who took advantage of the difficult terrain and distance from the centre of law enforcement in London to plunder wealthy travellers going to and from the horse races at Banstead Downs or the fashionable spa town of Epsom and, later in the 18th century, Brighton. The word 'highwayman' first appeared in the English language in 1617, not long before Epsom became a spa in 1620 and the first recorded horse race took place at Banstead Downs in 1625. Farmers going between the markets in Ewell and London also made attractive targets as they would often be carrying large amounts of cash. On 14 October 1685, Morgan Bourne of Stepney was found guilty and subsequently executed for counterfeiting Half Crown coins in Sutton; counterfeit coins could come in useful for paying highwaymen, and gaming debts. By 1685 a prominent gallows had been erected at Thornton Heath on the London to Newhaven road to deter them; it appeared on maps between 1690 and 1724 as "Gallows Green" and stood at the junction with the road leading to Wallington (where modern Hackbridge is today) and Sutton. Another gibbet stood to the south of Sutton at the Banstead crossroads on the Downs.
In 1718 the highway from London to Sutton was declared to be dangerous to persons, horses and cattle, impassable for five months in the year. At that time the route into Sutton was via Morden and the mile-long level causeway across Sutton Common. In the same year, the surveyor William Brazier made a plan of the manor of Sutton and measured the whole of the Common as far as Pylford Bridge (the north-west boundary of the manor) and close under the hedge to the corner of Lower Morden Lane: he measured the Common as being 241 acres 2 roods 31 perches in size with roads 20 feet wide. The highway's impassibility and Sutton's winter isolation might have been a factor which influenced George Simpson, a highwayman and member of a notorious gang robbing mail coaches leaving London, to hide with a sister in Sutton during late 1721 and early 1722; he subsequently returned to London where he was arrested, tried and hanged in May of that year. Reports in London's newspapers and Grub Street periodicals about highwaymen in the vicinity of Sutton and Banstead Downs seem to have peaked in the 1730s. In one account of a robbery which took place on Saturday 27 May 1738, quite possibly on the highway at the time through Sutton Common:
One Surrey folk-rhyme refers to the area's popular reputation during the 18th century for both agriculture and criminality:
Proximity to London provided readily accessible targets for Metropolitan criminals travelling outwards, and to 'local' thieves who were attracted to crime by the ease with which stolen items could be liquidated in the nearby capital. Many highwaymen resided in the capital while foraying outwards, and those who were arrested were often captured 'in town'. According to John Fielding, most of the highwaymen who operated within 20 miles of the capital retired to London for shelter: the conurbation provided them with anonymity and so was the: "...best place for such beasts of prey to shelter in." In 1745, when the Jacobite rising had made manifest to the government the shortcomings of the roads for the rapid transport of troops, the route through Mitcham and Sutton to Banstead Downs, which had been the scene of a failed royalist rising by the Earl of Holland in 1648, was measured and milestones were erected. This meant that, from the mid-18th century, the Common was crossed by two busy roads heading from London to the south; at one time 17 coaches were leaving London for the coast daily, most passing through in the early morning to arrive at the Cock Inn in Sutton for breakfast at 9 a.m., whilst the coach changed horses.
Sutton Common first seems to have appeared on a topographical map of Surrey made in 1749 by the King's Geographer, Emanuel Bowen; it was partially indicated by a marsh, as was the area now known as Morden Park to the west, called Malden Common on the map. The accompanying text states:
Other 18th century maps, like the 1779 map of Surrey made by Antonio Zatta, sometimes show Sutton Common as a woodland feature. It is interesting that Zatta's map does not show the route of the turnpike road from Mitcham to Sutton and Banstead Downs which was constructed in 1755, possibly because it was poorly maintained and unpopular amongst travellers at the time: in 1755 milestones further to the south were uprooted or defaced, and in 1774 the gate at Tadworth was cut down; a reward of £21 for information was offered in vain. The old route of Stane Street from Morden to Ewell via Stonecot Hill may have been more popular. Maps of the period showing the country round London record a place called "Pylford Bridge" or "Pistford Bridge", where the Pyl Brook river met the London Road at Stonecot Hill, a place name which has since been lost to history. In 1800, there were no people living along the three or so miles of highway between Morden and Ewell, and there was only one farm of significance on the two and a half miles of highway from Mitcham to Sutton.
During this period we also find references to "Bonhill Common" to the east of Sutton Common. In 1741 the Lord of the Manor and James Baker hedged, ditched and ploughed on Bonhill Common (north-east of the village) in an attempted enclosure; the copyholders fought and won their ancient rights to depasture their cattle, levant and couchant, and to cut bushes and furze on the Common four months in the year. In 1750 every Sutton householder was allowed to turn one cow on to the Common; those holding ten acres, two cows; thirty acres, three cows; and so on to a maximum of six cows. That year the Herdsman received an halfpenny a week for one cow, three farthings for more than one. A 1792 history of Surrey describes Sutton:
In 1793 the bounds of the parish were defined in great detail after Morden residents had encroached upon the Common. The matter was taken to court where, after Brazier's 1718 plan was referred to, judgment was given in favour of Sutton.
19th century
Sutton Common was enclosed in c. 1810–1812, which helped to confine criminals on horseback to the roads and provide building sites; here the water supply was good and the roads hard. Under the terms of the enclosure award, a small part of the common at Sutton Green was reserved as a recreation ground. At around this time one of the last and most audacious highway robberies took place in the area. On 5 February 1812, a blue coach travelling between Sutton and Reigate was robbed of three or four thousand pounds in bank notes: it remained an unsolved mystery. In 1816 a spur road from Redhill cut out Reigate, reducing the number of coaches using the Sutton route. Nonetheless negative public perception of Sutton, possibly linked to its reputation as a haven for highwaymen, persisted into the 1820s, as the journalist William Cobbett noted in his Rural Rides in May 1823: "From London to Reigate, through Sutton, is about as villainous a tract as England contains. The soil is a mixture of gravel and clay, with big yellow stones in it, sure sign of really bad land."