Flowers have been traded on this street for centuries

Flowers on Garratt Lane

Before Earlsfield had a station, or even a name, this was market garden country. Here is a short history of the lane outside our door, and of Lily Looker, who is the reason there is a flower on your table.

The River Wandle runs a few hundred yards east of the pub. For most of its recorded history it was one of the hardest-working rivers in England, lined with mills for grinding corn, bleaching and dyeing cloth, and making snuff. The land either side of it grew things. Lavender at Mitcham, watercress in the shallows, and flowers and vegetables that went north into London by cart before dawn.

Garratt Lane was the road they took.

The name on the lane

Garratt was a hamlet on the lane. It is best remembered now for an eighteenth century joke that got out of hand. Every few years, for the best part of fifty years, locals held the Garratt Elections, a mock parliamentary contest with candidates, speeches and a great deal of drink. Samuel Foote wrote a farce about it, The Mayor of Garret, in 1763. The most popular candidate was Sir Jeffrey Dunstan, a wig seller. By some accounts up to 80,000 people came out from London to watch.

So a crowd, a lot of beer and a public house on Garratt Lane is not a new idea. We are just carrying on.

Lily Looker

One of the side streets off Garratt Lane was Wardley Street, a long road of around eighty houses running down to the Wandle. Many of the families who lived there were Romany and Traveller families, and many of them worked as flower sellers.

Lily Looker was one of them. She sold carnations, orchids and lucky heather around Piccadilly and the West End. Her headstone has a flower basket carved into the red granite.

Most of Wardley Street was condemned by the late 1950s, and only a handful of the old buildings are still standing.