'People of Wardley Street' Guided Walk and Plaque Unveiling

The Walk is in the Wandle Valley area between Earlsfield and Wandsworth, a stretch of SW London where nomadic people came to settle in the late 19th century. They evolved into a substantial community of costermongers in Wardley Street, Garratt Lane who were documented in an illustrated magazine and recorded by the BBC in 1948. The Walk identifies individual stories, the sites of industries along the River Wandle that sustained this community and the graveyard where many of them are buried. Wardley Street was largely demolished in the late fifties but the traveller community returned to the undeveloped site in the seventies leading to the establishment of a permanent site less than a mile away. Wardley Street is a 'spiritual home' for people of Traveller heritage, woven into the family history of so many people not just in Wandsworth or London, but all over the world. The Walk which starts at noon in the community garden next to St Andrew's Church in Earlsfield will conclude with a unique blue plaque unveiling ceremony in Wardley Street starting at 2pm and the launch of a full 'People of Wardley Street' research project.

Host or Publisher Geoff Simmons, Summerstown182