Lower Morden

Lower Morden is an area within the district of Morden in south west corner of the London Borough of Merton, to the west of Morden Park and south of Raynes Park.

A brief history of Lower Morden

Until it was absorbed by the suburban expansion of the 1930s, the hamlet of Lower Modern was a small rural farming community within the parish of Morden approximately half a mile to the west of the main village situated at the top of the hill. Lower Morden had grown up around the village green and the Beverley and Pyl Brooks.

In the 1870s, the main properties of Lower Morden were Morden Farm (close to the modern school of the same name), Peacock Farm (now covered by Cranmer Close and Cardinal Avenue) and Hobalds Farm. Close by was Morden Common.

Today nothing of the orginal hamlet remains except perhaps a few ancient trees and old field boundary lines followed by the alignments of the roads that were to replace them. The first major development was the establishment in 1891 of Battersea New Cemetery (now Morden Cemetery) on land adjacent to Hobalds Farm to the north of Green Lane. The loss of Morden Common followed, its area now occupied by the Merton & Sutton Joint Cemetery and the Garth Road Industrial Estate.

Up until the second world war the marshy land either side of the Pyl Brook now used as playing fields was cow pasture. The majority of residential development took place in the late 1930s with mock Tudor style houses being built between Morden Park and Stonecot Hill and north between Grand Drive, Hillcross Avenue and Cannon Hill Lane.