Our next meeting in February will be a talk by John Brown on The Dukes of Bedford:The Tooting Connection. This is a change to our previously advertised talk. The meeting will be on Tuesday 12th February at 7.30pm. Details of our meeting venue and how to get there are here.1 CommentPosted in Blog, Past Tooting History Group EventsEdit

Our next meeting on Tuesday 12th March will hear about the history of Greasby’s Auction House. We will hear from Managing Director Christine Sachett about the Longley Road-based auctioneers who are celebrating their centenary in Tooting this year. The talk will be at our usual venue here.

You can find more about Greasby’s here.

Merton Priory will be the subject of our next monthly meeting on Tuesday April 9th. John Hawkes from the Merton Priory Trust will be coming along to tell us about the 800 year history of the Priory and future developments. The meeting starts at 7.30 pm and is at The United Reform Church in Rookstone Road, Tooting.(Details here.)

You can read more about the Merton Priory Trust here.

Tooting has connections with several figures from the Victorian and Edwardian music hall. For our May monthly meeting, you can here about these stars and what their connections were. We are also promised some recordings for your delectation and delight! Peter Charlton from The British Music hall Society will be addressing us.

We meet at 7.30 on Tuesday 14th May in The United Reform Church, Rookstone Road, Tooting.

What are the buildings, objects, features that make Tooting important to you? What does being “locally listed” mean? What do you want to protect and improve in Tooting? Come to our June meeting and find out about local listing and Tooting History Group’s role in drawing it up.

The meeting is on Tuesday 11th June at our usual venue – The United Reformed Church in Rookstone Road – details here.

Layers of London is a map-based history website. Users can access free historic maps of London and contribute their own stories, memories and histories to create a public social history resource about their area.

Come and hear Amy Todd from The Layers of London Project tell us how we can put Tooting on the Layers of London map.

You can see the Layers of London website here.

The meeting starts at 7.30 on Tuesday 9th July at our usual venue – The United Reform Church, Rookstone Road, SW179NQ.

This talk, organised by GLL/Tooting Library, is happening next Tuesday 16th July at Tooting Library from 6pm. You can book free tickets here.

Come visit Tooting Library and learn about the construction and demise of Springfield Hospital with Dr Khaldoon Ahmed!

Psychiatrist and filmmaker Dr Khaldoon Ahmed will take us on a journey of the construction of Asylums in the 19th Century, to their eventual demise to luxury housing. 

Supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund, Khaldoon and a team of volunteers looked at the history of Springfield Hospital, originally built in 1841, now being redeveloped into apartments and new mental health facilities. In this talk he will present his findings, and show a short work-in-progress film about the old psychiatric intensive care unit at Springfield that was demolished last month. The talk will also include a discussion on architecture and the treatment of mental illness.

Have you got a favourite historic place in Tooting you want to see featured on the internet? Is there a person, feature or memory you want to record on the web?

Come along to Tooting Library on Saturday 20^th July from 2-5pm when Tooting History Group will be uploading historic features to the Layers of London Website. Bring your photos (and memories). Have a look at the Layers of London website at: https://www.layersoflondon.org/

We look forward to seeing you at Tooting Library on the 20^th July.

Were you evacuated from London during the war? Do you know someone who was? Next Wednesday, 21st August at 2pm, there is a talk by historian Peter Daniel at The Furzedown Project in Moyser Road about the evacuation of children from London during the Second World War. The Furzedown Project is at 91-93, Moyser Road, SW16 6SJ.

As part of the Tooting Common Heritage Project, a special event has been organised at the Fossil Tree on Tooting Common for next Wednesday, 4 September, at 2.00 pm.

Dr Paul Kendrick from the Natural History Museum will talk about the science behind the tree and Janet Smith from The Tooting History Group will give a short account of its history and how it came to be on the Common.

This is a free event – come and join us if you can!

Janet Smith will be talking at our October meeting about John Hendry Anderson and his role in building Tooting Bec Lido. The meeting will be at 7.30pm on Tuesday 8th October and held at our usual venue here.

Our monthly meeting on Tuesday November 12th will be about Sindy (the doll) and her genesis. Come and hear David Luff from the Merton Historical Society tell us about the family tree and how she begun life down the road at a toy factory in Merton. We meet at the United Reform Church in Rookstone Road (details here).