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This Week's Walks - Archive

Please see the Saturday Walker's Club This Week's Walks page.

This is an archive of walks done by the Saturday Walker's Club. You should only need to use this page if the SWC website is down.

Thursday 14 September 2017

Evening Walk - Morden Hall Park and Merton Abbey Mills [First Posting]

Morden Hall Park and Merton Abbey Mills (Morden to Colliers Wood)
Length: 4.6 km (2.9 mi)
Net Walking Time: 1 ½ hrs      

Meet: Morden Station at 18.45 hours.
Morden station is the southern terminus of the Northern Line, and in Zone 4. Travel time from Bank is 32 minutes. Colliers Wood is 2 stops closer to Central London on the same line.

First Outing of this South London walk, short enough to finish before darkness.
This walk does a loop around the NT's Morden Hall Park  (free entry) with rose garden, waterways, reed beds, and parkland and then follows the River Wandle in a northerly direction. After passing Deen City Farm, it passes Merton Abbey Mills, a collection of heritage industrial buildings which are now cafés, bars and restaurants.
Morden Hall Park has an interesting history. In Henry VIII's time, this area was part of Merton Abbey. In the 18th century, the area became an estate with a deer park, a cress farm, and had watermills. The last owner of the estate held large film star fairs in the 30's. The estate is now owned by the National Trust and the Hall is empty. [Cafés and shops in the grounds will be shut in the evening.]
Merton Abbey Mills is a former William Morris 'arts and crafts'-factory. 

Eat/Drink: The William Morris and The Merton Apprentice at Merton Abbey Mills; The Charles Holden, or The Royal Standard by Colliers Wood tube station.

For walk directions, map, and gpx/kml files click here. T=short.13

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

A few of us did this as an eveing walk several years ago, probably before it was officially written up. It will make a pleasant evening stroll.

Andrew said...

The Mordern Hall car park will also be closed (according to the sign). Free street parking after 6:30pm. Around Liberty Avenue, SW19 2RQ is always free

Thomas G said...

Last week we couldn't get out of a park (as it was locked for the night), this week we couldn't get in, at least not along the prescribed route, as the NT part of Morden Hall Park incl. the Rose Garden gets locked at 18.00, so the 7 of us (incl. one first timer having been coaxed in via Meetup) strolled along the road to locate the public r-o-w access into the park and linked up with the swc route from the edge of the Rose Garden. Halfway during our subsequent loop through the park we bumped into 2 others, one having walked in from Carshalton, one the creator of the walk and nearby resident, so n=9 then continued in w=autumnal coolish weather along the new-ish long boardwalk through the wetlands part and on along The Wandle River to Merton Abbey Mills. Suggestions of a drink there were voted down on account of wanting to get to near the tube before darkness, and 7 then ended up in the Charles Holden for a bevvie or three.
The alternative access route will be added to the gpx and text.