LONDON A-Z W is for Upper Woodcote Village (the Webb Estate)
Just west of Purley is an extraordinary housing estate of extremely desirable houses in an extremely desirable setting. The Webb Estate was the brainchild of William Webb, a local estate agent with a grand vision and a pioneer of the garden village movement. If I tell you work started in 1888 and was completed in 1925, all to schedule, that'll tell you something about the singular determination of the man who built it. And if I tell you the estate covers 260 acres and has just 230 homes, that'll tell you something about the pockets of the people who live here.
The main entrance to Upper Woodcote Village, the road residents don't mind you using, bears off Smitham Bottom Lane by the old people's home. A minute's walk takes you to an unexpectedly rural vista - what looks like a pub, what looks like a village green - amid what otherwise is a neighbourhood of rustic commuter homes. Were it nicer weather you could stretch out on the sloping greensward, perhaps noting how few homes there are around the perimeter of so large a green. And if you entered the 'pub' you'd discover it doesn't sell beer, never has in 123 years, because The Lord Roberts on the Green started out as a Temperance Inn and still sells nothing stronger than a double espresso. What on earth is going on here?
William Webb's big idea was to perfect the landscaping before any houses got built. In 1888 he divided up his newly-purchased fields into several large plots and separated them all by privet hedges, rows of shrubs and semi-mature trees. He then waited another ten years before starting to sell off the plots, triggered finally by the arrival of trams into Purley. William didn't build the houses, he let purchasers choose their own architects and build what they wanted, each screened from its neighbour by a natural boundary as if part of "one large garden". The first house to be completed was his own, this in 1903, tucked away at the very heart of the residential swirl. So glacial was development that the majority took place between 1912 and 1920, and the final roof tile wasn't laid until 37 years after the project began. That's a "Gardens First" philosophy for you.
The Lord Roberts on the Green was one of the earliest openings and included a Post Office as well as a Tea Room, but no alcohol because Temperance and the Garden City movement were often bedfellows. Later owners diversified into general provisions, and this useful mix continued until 2017 when the Post office closed and the dining options nudged firmly upmarket. The current refreshment offer is coffee and chic cakes with a broad hot menu, very much targeted at those who wouldn't dream of lunch at Dobbies. Outside is the War Memorial, recently wreathed, on which are written the names of 345 dead soldiers from Coulsdon & Purley Urban District. It seems bold to locate the two towns' commemorative focus here, in neither town centre, but Webb was very pro-remembrance and you ain't seen nothing yet.
The green is sparse in facilities as well as neighbours. There are only two benches, both at the top end, also a single seesaw as a sop to younger residents seeking recreation. The village stocks are of course fake, there being nobody nearby in medieval times, and the artificial whipping post has already been removed. Close by are two roads into the remainder of the estate where the vast majority of residents live, each behind a gate drivers need a fob to open. Every entrance to the inner estate is gated, often in very different styles, and some have gatekeeper's cottages alongside from the days when everything had to be approved manually. Signs say PRIVATE ROAD Residents Only Please Drive Slowly No Through Road No Parking No Driving Tuition (or some combination of the above). Rest assured that if you're on foot you can simply push through the side gates and discover how the other half live.
The majority of the Village comprises nine interconnected avenues, each with its own horticultural focus. Rose Walk has a rose border in front of every plot, South Border has a herbaceous bed, Briar Hill has briar hedges and Woodcote Lane was intended to resemble a country lane. Silver Lane is named after the two rows of silver birches that stretch its full length, although their leaves are currently falling like rain and a more appropriate name would be Golden Walk. The roads are broad, quiet and lined by not many houses that can't necessarily be seen very clearly. Webb insisted that every house be at least 60 feet from a road and 10 feet from its side boundaries, also that all outbuildings should be suitably screened by shrubbery. Leases also demanded no subdivision into flats, no businesses to trade on the premises and absolutely no washing to be hung out to dry "unless hidden by a hedge or other suitable enclosure", rules which are still (mostly) followed.
To walk the streets isn't too oppressive, other folk are out jogging, directing the builders or returning from the LROTG, also Purley's big Tesco is less than a mile away down Furze Hill. That said the gardener at Weathercote did give me quite a look as if to say "what on earth are you doing here?", even though I'd just walked to the end of his drive along an official public footpath. I was here to admire the strangest road of all, Promenade de Verdun, which was included as a living memorial to all the French soldiers who died during the First World War. It's the only straight road on the estate, runs for half a kilometre and leads to a shrubby dead end with a granite memorial obelisk. This is only inscribed in French - "Aux soldats de France morts glorieusement pendant la Grande Guerre" - a timely reminder that remembrance doesn't have to stop at home and should also look overseas.
The most striking feature of Promenade de Verdun is its row of Lombardy poplars. This runs the full length of the road, initially along a chained-off strip signed Keep Off Verge. The reason for this caution is that the soil beneath the poplars was transported wholesale from the "Field of Explosion" near Armentieres, all ten tons of it, with all the shrapnel sifted out lest souvenir hunters damage the trees through their digging. It's an extraordinary statement of Anglo-French support conceived at a time when postwar relations were strained, and I'd say more affecting than the war memorial on the village green. The Promenade is just one of the reasons Webb was keen the wider public should enjoy his estate, the wider landscaping being the main draw, so feel free to come and walk a circuit. It's barely any distance from Purley town centre, also you can always stop off for a pistachio latte halfway round, and I've already pencilled in a return when the Rose Walk is at its finest.
