Walking the River Wandle Part 2: The River Emerges
For many years, Wandle Park showed very little traces of its namesake, which had been culverted and buried in 1968. However, in 2012, the river was freed, and now it flows between grassy banks, cutting a course through the middle of the park, attracting wildlife and rubbish alike. At the western edge it disappears back underground again, and here the walker must take a slight detour, first crossing the tracks of Wandle Park tram stop, then through residential streets and across Purley Way, one of the first purpose-built bypasses in Britain, and the first to have sodium street lamps (now replaced with more modern lights).
Water is found again in the form of Waddon Ponds, which, somewhat confusingly, is just a single mill pond, once belonging to the monks of Bermondsey Abbey, and later used to power the now-vanished Waddon Mill’s grindstones. Nowadays the pond is mainly occupied by waterfowl, with rats patrolling its banks. At its northern edge, it spills into the culverted Wandle.
Following a public bridleway along the edge of an industrial estate, the river is soon found again, now both wide and fast flowing as it emerges. As the pathway joins residential roads, the Wandle flows beside and even through the gardens.
The walker has now reached Beddington, and must make a few twists and turns through the streets to keep up with the river as it runs around them. Soon though, it is an easy straight path westwards all the way to Beddington Park, passing by the large St Mary’s Church and the Tudor house of Carew Manor, now a school.
Beddington Park was once the deer park of Carew Manor, but is now part of a stretch of largely undeveloped land that ends at Mitcham, two miles to the north. Here, the Wandle is easy to follow as it continues in a westerly direction, gradually widening as it reaches a mill pond at the edge of the park. The river rushes through channels and under small stone bridges here, then under the road, where it must temporarily be lost from sight again…
