Phipps Bridge, Merton
An improved but still less than popular housing estate in north-west Mitcham, separated from Merton’s industrial zone by the River Wandle
A castellated buttress on Phipps Bridge Road
Phipps Bridge’s 16th-century name probably derives from an association with a local family called Pipp.
After 1700 the Wandle riverside here became part of an extensive textile industry, led by Huguenot entrepreneurs. The technique of using copper plates to print cloth was pioneered at Phipps Bridge in the mid-18th century.
The first significant housebuilding came in the late 19th century with the laying out of streets between Church Road and the southern part of Phipps Bridge Road. When subsidence affected the labourers’ cottages on Phipps Bridge Road, the owner of Wandle Villa built a castellated and ‘ruinated’ cottage as a buttress at the end of the row.
In the 1960s Phipps Bridge was zoned for high-rise council housing, which subsequently became very run-down. From the mid-1990s the tower blocks were demolished and replaced with low-rise units. Over a thousand homes were built in the space of four years while existing properties were improved in one of London’s largest estate action schemes of recent times. The new properties are managed by housing associations.
Twelve Roman graves were found in Phipps Bridge in 1983.
