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Some
time before 1910, the Merton Park Estate Company tried out a bus service of
its own, linking with central Wimbledon. Unfortunately no details or
photographs of the vehicle appear to have survived, though it is known that
it was garaged in the Coach House in Melrose Road, the present headquarters
of the John Innes Society. It is likely to have been a small 10 or 12
seater single decker. If larger it would hardly have fitted into the Coach
house.
The
bus is reported to have disgraced itself by running into a shop in
Wimbledon, presumably at the top of
Hartfield Road,
unless the route lay via
Victoria Crescent
to avoid the danger of running back on the steep ascent by the Prince of
Wales. (Incidentally, when later, the London General buses ran along
Hartfield Road, a chock used to be applied to one of the solid-tyred wheels
of a bus when standing on that slope.
Bertram Rumble said in 1910 that ‘mechanical difficulties’ had caused his
company's bus to be taken off (there were problems with mechanical
transport, not made easier by the lack of experienced drivers).
By
kind permission of Mr & Mrs Alastair Alton, study of the original lease on
their house, 21 Chatsworth Avenue,
has been possible. It is from the Polytechnic Estate Ltd. to one J C
Eddington, dated 25 March 1906, for 99 years at an annual rent of £6 6s.,
paid quarterly from 25 December 1909.
The
directories show
Oxford Avenue
as ‘Polytechnic Estate’ though it is separated from the main part. This
separation enabled the promoters of the Wimbledon and Sutton Railway to
route their line across the intervening land. It is possible, although the
theory cannot be confirmed, that tentative plans for such a line had been
made, perhaps as much as two or three years before the first announcements,
and that land had been purposely reserved.
Sandringham Avenue,
an addition to the estate not apparently planned by the original developers,
had been partly completed by 1913, with houses, 2 to 22.
The John Innes Society
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