Clapham Common

(1800–1805)]] Originally common land for the parishes of Battersea and Clapham, William Hewer was among the early Londoners to build adjacent to it. Samuel Pepys, the diarist, died at Hewer's house in 1703. The land had been used for cricket in 1700 and was drained in the 1760s, In the early 1770s, during his stay in London representing America in affairs of the state, Benjamin Franklin had written a paper explaining how he used the ponds for science experiments, and in developing a "magic" trick. While traveling on a ship, Franklin had observed that the wake of a ship was diminished when the cooks scuttled their greasy water. He studied the effects at Clapham Common on a large pond there.…

In the centre of the park is a bandstand constructed in 1890. It is the largest bandstand in London and a Grade II listed building. For many years it was also erroneously thought to be one of the bandstands first erected in 1861 in the Royal Horticultural Society's gardens in South Kensington, which would have made it the oldest surviving cast iron bandstand in Europe. However, further research has shown that these bandstands went to Southwark Park and Peckham Rye, and it appears that the Clapham bandstand was fabricated to a very similar design almost thirty years later. The bandstand's maintenance had been neglected by Lambeth Council for thirty years, and by 2001 it was thought to be in…