For my A-Z safari of unsung suburbs I chose Lamorbey near Sidcup. But I also road-tested a couple of other Ls in case they were better, which they weren't but let me tell you about them anyway.
L is for Lower Morden
Before we go lower, best start with Morden itself. Everyone knows it as the southern terminus of the Northern line but the original village of Morden was a kilometre to the southwest around St Lawrence's Church. Lower Morden was another kilometre further on, hence even further off-radar, with a couple of farms, a scattering of cottages and a duckpond on a long village green. Only in the 1930s did the Mock Tudor invasion advance and hey presto, everything rural was wiped from the map.
At the village centre today is the weirdly-named Hatfeild Primary School, not a spelling error but a nod to Gilliat Hatfeild the last Lord of the Manor of Morden. The school was built on the site of Lower Morden Farm whereas Peacock Farm has been replaced by the large but intimate Lower Morden Garden Centre. Here the horticulturally-blessed of Merton and Sutton drive for emergency compost or perhaps a nice day out perusing secateurs and begonias before a cuppa in the cafe. Between the two is an alley called Bow Lane which leads swiftly to the HQ of the 1st Lower Morden scout troop, not that there's a 2nd but it does confirm this location genuinely exists.
The new centre of Lower Morden is the five-way roundabout by the Baptist Church, formerly the junction of two very minor country lanes. The dominant building is The Morden Brook pub, formerly The Beverley, whose inn sign depicts a much-too-scenic river that locally doesn't exist. By rights it ought to be called The Pyl Brook and show a drab culvert hemmed between lock-up garages but presumably reality wouldn't sell so many pints. The local shopping parade starts with a Co-op and ends with a Pet Grooming Spa, indeed there are more salons here for dogs than humans, but also a salt-of-the-earth cafe and a betting shop. Three bus routes link Grand Drive to Morden station, escape generally being the better retail option.
Easily the most interesting place hereabouts is Morden Cemetery, 70 respectful acres opened in 1891 when this was still the middle of nowhere. Entrance is through two turrety gates, beyond which a long straight tree-lined avenue leads to a Gothic chapel which squats like a bat on the horizon. Only hearses and limousines are permitted to drive all the way to the far end, and even then they have to wait at a strategically positioned traffic light before starting their final approach. The grounds are lovely, especially the rose garden by the cloisters which is currently at its tributeworthy best. What's odd is seeing signs everywhere referencing Wandsworth Council, this because the cemetery was originally built by the Battersea Burial Board so ownership resides with a non-local borough. Equally counter-intuitively the chapel contains the North East Surrey Crematorium, and that's because back in 1958 this wasn't London.
Find the gate out the back of the cemetery and you can walk to this L's farthest extremity which is the Lower Morden Equestrian Centre. They've found a remote spot where Green Lane meets Pig Farm Alley, erected some sheds and now offer popular equestrian services like pony rides and walkouts. In their main ring I watched a hard-hatted novice receiving instruction in how to trot in circles, and over in the scrappy paddocks tried to work out whether the white horse grazing in front of the gasholders was Elsa, Lance or Rose. From here to the tube station is two whole miles, just so you know how Lower this particular part of Morden is.
Had this been a full length alphabetical round-up I'd also have told you about the extra cemetery that swallowed up the Common, the meadowy glories of Morden Park and the upcoming appearance of Soul II Soul. But I still have a second L to bring you so let's hop across the Thames to another swallowed village you're less likely to recognise.
L is for Lampton
If you live in the London borough of Hounslow you may know LamptonServices as the council-owned company that collects the recycling, maintains your parks and builds affordable homes. But Lampton is also a place, a quiet village once surrounded by orchards and market gardens which in the 1930s took a direct hit from the Hounslow bypass and will never recover.
It's hard today to imagine rural Lampton as a small knot of lanes with a pub, a pond, a manor house and a few runs of terraced cottages. But this unlucky hamlet was in the way when the Great West Road was driven through in an unrelenting straight line, hence the northernmost farm became a Tudorbethan shopping parade, one row of cottages morphed into a hotel for Heathrowgoers and the duckpond is now a BP garage. Two fine villas survive as a nursery school and a cafe but the manor house itself is long gone, replaced by a squat office block also called Lampton House. I was surprised to see a square orange logo on the front but this is indeed an outpost of Orange Business Services, the French mobile company, hiding out beside the A4 in Lampton.
The local watering hole is The Black Horse but can't be the original village pub because it makes a big fuss of having been established in 1926. It may receive a lot of custom from Lampton Garage, a Metroline bus depot, but obviously only after drivers on the 81, 120 and H32 have finished their shifts. We're less than a mile from the centre of Hounslow so I'm surprised the place needs quite so many takeaways, these especially for grilled goods but also peshawari and vegetarian pizza because the half the local population are from the Indian subcontinent. Incidentally the reason why one short stretch of Jersey Parade bends away from the main road is because that's what the original country lane did, which is also why it's hard to see Kebab O'Clock through the trees.
Lampton's one nice spot is Lampton Park, 40 acres of mostly grass but with a few patches of woodland at the far end. It was opened by George Lansbury MP in 1930 and once boasted a significant ornamental rose garden, these days alas a rose-free zone surrounding a somewhat choked circular lily pond. The lump of rock that looks like a weird indented sculpture is actually a genuine sarsen stone discovered in a gravel pit a few hundred yards away in 1926. It's been on display near the tennis courts since 1951, hence the explanatory text on the metal plaque is very much of its era... Half a million years ago, perhaps, the stone may have reached the position in which it was found, by some natural means that can only be conjectured.
In the 1970s the allotments by the park were repurposed as the site of Hounslow Civic Centre, the new borough's new seat of government, comprising four linked lowrise glass and concrete pavilions. This lasted 40 years before the council decided a smaller shinier block closer to the town centre would be more efficient, then sold off the original site for housing. The new estate is called Lampton Parkside and is now nearing completion, a dense warren of vernacular blocks and bricky terraces, a tiny minority of which are actually beside the park. If you truly believe "it's a place where you can savour the city, delight in nature and live life with more vitality" then I hope you'll be very happy there, but the real benefit is being just a four minute walk from Hounslow Central station. They could have called it Lampton South instead, but perhaps best they never did.
