River Wandle - Flow

Flow

In the late pleistocene, the river probably sprang from the north of the Vale of Holmesdale across the North Downs through the Merstham Gap, a wind gap. In more recent times, rainwater falling on the Down percolates through the chalk and reappears as springs in central Croydon, Beddington, and Carshalton. The occasional stream, known as the Bourne, which runs through the Caterham valley (and Smitham Bottom in Coulsdon) valleys is a source of the River Wandle but only surfaces after heavy rainfall. A series of ditches and culverts channels the water from Purley to Croydon.

For many centuries the River Wandle rose from a spring near the present Swan and Sugarloaf public house on Brighton Road, flowing through the Haling neighbourhood of Croydon, ran northwards along Southbridge Road and upon reaching Old Town it was 20 ft (6.1 m) across and began to divide into smaller channels. The grounds of the Old Palace and Scarbrook Hill had several springs, ponds, streams and canals where fish swam, especially trout. However, as Croydon's population grew and the water closet increased in use the Old Town streams became little better than open sewers and were filled in or culverted from 1840 after outbreaks of typhoid and cholera.

The river then flowed through Pitlake and on through two marshy fields - Froggs Mead and Stubbs Mead — drained to form Wandle Park in 1890. Local springs were used to form a boating lake in the park, but frequent drying up problems led to the lake being filled in and the river was culverted in 1967. In 2012 the Wandle is being restored to the surface in Wandle Park. The Wandle then continues underground, through where the gas works used to stand, under the Purley Way road past Waddon Ponds and appears on the surface at the road Richmond Green where a small green buffer to its south acts as the green after the footpath at the end of Mill Lane in Waddon, Croydon.

A tributary starts in Thornton Heath as the Norbury Brook that flows north then west to become the River Graveney and joins the Wandle near Summerstown. For part of its length it forms the boundary between the London Boroughs of Croydon and Lambeth and, further downstream, the border between Merton and Wandsworth - from 1900 to 1963 the official boundary between Surrey and London.

'Village' names in the Wandle basin include: Croydon, Waddon, Beddington, Wallington, Carshalton, The Wrythe, Hackbridge, Mitcham, Ravensbury, St Helier, Morden, Merton Abbey, Colliers Wood, South Wimbledon, Summerstown, and Wandsworth.