(A) Long before the road building, Clapham Common (which means ‘the homestead’ or ‘stubby ground’) was a patch of wasteland with hillocks, ditches, ponds and grazing land for sheep and cattle. In fact it was part of the open countryside stretching down to the City of London. Windmill Lane was still a rural track until 1840, although the inn had become a staging post for coaches.
To your right on the far side of the common, you can view the recently rennovated grand Parisian-style apartment blocks dating from 1860.
(B) The Windmill pub has stood on the Common since around 1665, and owes its name to a windmill that once stood nearby. The exact location of the former windmill is not known, however in 1758 a court witness referred to a windmill at Balham Wood Lane (now Nightingale Lane) which was transferred to the east part of the common. The windmill clearly pre-dated this time but it is not known whether the pub was named after the actual windmill had been demolished.
(C) In 1889, Clapham residents petitioned the London County Council for a bandstand. This was built a year later at a cost of £600. The Bandstand was a copy of the two erected in 1861 in the Royal Horticultural Society's gardens in South Kensington. It proved a great attraction with concerts on Wednesday afternoons and on Sundays.
(D) Holy Trinity Church is open Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesday, and Friday mornings 9 – 12 and Saturday’s 10 to 1. The Holy Trinity opened for worship in 1776. A plain, simple building, it reflected the calm spirit of those rational and enlightened times. An old church had existed since the middle ages, in Rectory Grove, where St Paul’s Church now stands. It had grown over the years in a haphazard sort of way and by the mid-eighteenth century was in a poor state of repair. It was also far too small for what was by this time one of the fastest growing villages round London. The centre of the village had shifted, and the emphasis was now on the area around the Common, where rich Londoners had their new mansions.
After much debate, the parishioners decided to build a new Church on the Common. An Act of Parliament was obtained, to allow the land to be bought from the manorial family and to set up a Trust to manage the construction.
The church was the place of worship for the members of The Clapham Sect’, an influential group of like-minded Church of England social reformers, at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Its members shared common political views concerning the liberation of Slaves, the abolition of the slave trade and the reform of the penal system. The group's name originates from Clapham, then a village, where both William Wilberforce and Samuel Thornton (the sect's two most influential leaders) resided and where many of the group's meetings were held. After many decades of work both in British society and in Parliament, the group saw their efforts rewarded with the final passage of the Slave Trade Act in 1807, banning the trade throughout the British Empire and, after many further years of campaigning, the total emancipation of British slaves with the passing of the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833. They were also credited with the foundation of several missionary and tract societies, including the British and Foreign Bible Society and the Church Missionary Society.