LONDON'S VILLAGE

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 105, 30 October 1935, Page 11

LONDON'S VILLAGE

Legends of Nelson and Dick Turpin are associated with London's 200-year-old village White Square, Clapham, which is to be demolished under one of the largest clearance schemes ever undertaken by a borough council. The estimated cost is about £150,000. White- Square, whose red brick cottages still face what was once a village green, is hidden between two bustling thoroughfares. Less than a century ago, it was really a village. About its cottages were green fields in which cattle grazed. Famous barefisted fighters once battled for purses on the village green. Nelson stayed at the village inn and noticed the number of fine young men who loitered in its taproom. A few days later those same young men staggered dazedly on to the decks of a tall flagship. From the quarter-deck a small one-armed figure smiled down upon them. They had been "press-ganged." Under the floor of one of the cottages is an old well. Near it once stood a house in which Dick Turpin, hotly pressed by "runners," took refuge. When he escaped he placed his loot in a tightsealed box at the bottom of the well. The jewels and the gold remain there until this day—so the legend runs.