The planning by l’Anson and building of The Toast Rack with Mr Charles Kynock

This series of blogs in our From The Archives series is intended as a resource for schools and local residents who are interested in researching local history.

School children should feel free to use the images in these blogs for their projects or homework.

We are very happy to help schools with access to relevant materials. However, the images that are reproduced here should be assumed to be the copyright and may not be reproduced without license from the archives and commercial use is therefore strictly prohibited.

The Toast Rack is, when viewed from above, a curious enclave to one side of Trinity Road.

Curious: as it is the only victorian development on that side of that section of Trinity Road.

Planning the Area – Roads & Drainage

A beautiful but undated map of Wandsworth Common and the surrounding area survives in The Metropolitan Archives. The date of the map can be estimated from the existence of the railways lines (1856 & 1869), The Royal Patriotic Asylum (1859) and the undeveloped state of The Toast Rack (developing from 1882 onwards), marked as market gardens. You can also see The Black Sea later to be filled into to become Spencer Park.

We suspect that the map, printed by Cook & Hammond who were well regarded map printers, was commissioned in connection with the Wandsworth Common Act of 1871. It is printed using unusually high quality and expense lithographic process for the time and has been printed on rag paper for durability. It is also printed with the Metropolitan Board of Works title block indicating that it was a special print run for them.

We have been unable to understand the purpose of the curious pencil circle that looks like it was traced round a tin can with the off centre X in the middle of it. One theory put forward, was that it was an easy walking distance from the station. We would be interested to hear your theories on this and how it came to be marked on this file copy!

The first application was approved by the Metropolitan Board of Works Building Act Committee, on 11th December 1868 made by Edward l’Anson on behalf of Magdalen College Oxford.

This application approved the formation of four roads for The Toast Rack being Routh Road, Henderson Road [originally to have been called Magdalena Road], Magdalena Road [originally to have been called Sheppard Road was later renamed Nicosia Road presumably to avoid confusion with Magdalen Road], Patten Road. Both Magdalena and Henderson Road were to have extended to the other side of Wandsworth and Tooting Lane [now called Trinity Road]. This scheme excluded Baskerville Road. We know the original intended names as they are crossed out on the application drawing which is in the LMA archives as well as there being some letters to and fro on the road namings.

A drawing of 1868 Toast Rack scheme as formally approved. You can see the road names which were altered are crossed out on the plan.

Things were not to be so simple as you can see from the annotations to the covering folder.

It is worth considering that the widening of Wandsworth to Tooting Lane [the old name for Trinity Road] was to only 20 feet which is the half the usual width of the 40 foot new roads that MBW insisted on. This was not intended to be a major road at this point in time.

The creation of drain was, in this case, rather important. As an attempt had been made in 1880 to start building before the drains were approved never mind built! Given that this was the era of sorting out The Great Stink the Wandsworth Board of Works objected to this in a letter to The Metropolitan Board of Works dated 16th December 1880. Interestingly the builders name is a Mr George so seemingly this was an effort to start development before Mr Kynock was on the scene.

Dates for the approval of the formation of road [List of Streets and Places, London County Council, 1929].

Dorlcote Road 1882
Bakerville Road 1882
Henderson Road 1868 & 1882
Bagdalena Road – is a typo for Magdalena Road
Nicosia Road 1882
Patten Road 1868, 1882 & 1890

This correlates with the other primary source documents in the MBW minutes and London Metropolitan Archives.

Magdalen Road is formed in sections 1868, 1876 & 1884 (the 1884 is shown in brackets).

The Toast Rack – evidence from deeds.

Wandsworth Heritage Service in Battersea Library have a good selection of deeds and plans that shed a light on this development and these are open for general consultation.

Less accessible are the Magdalen College Archives, which contain some potentially interesting maps and deed plans of the relevant areas. From the descriptions these are the master maps and plans from which the London Metropolitan Archives and Wandsworth Heritage Service tracings are probably derived.

It is worth noting that as far as The Metropolitan Board of Works was concerned The Toast Rack was part of the Magdalen College Estate development as can be seen below from the snippet from the index of the 1882 Vol2 MBW minutes.

The Toast Rack side of Trinity Road was developed in a slightly unusual manner. Magdalen College leased the lands to Mr Charles Kynock initially. Kynock then developed the property.

What is slightly odd is that the lease was granted to the leasee by Magdalen College itself even though the lease does not appear to have been surrendered by Kynock. In fact Kynock countersigns the

What is also not clear is how Kynock got paid for his part of the bargain. We can see that Kynock was co-signatory to the deeds below as his signature and seal are on the final page of some of the deeds. Can can also see for 5 Nicosia Road that the initial 99 year lease was granted directly to Kynock. Deeds reference numbers, where quoted, are to the Wandsworth Heritage Service collections.

1 Patten Road – 11th August 1884 – granted by The President & Scholars of Magdalen College Oxford – to Mr James Duncanson for the term of 99 years – at £10 per annum. Deeds/73.

5 Nicosia road – 29th September 1880 – granted by The President & Scholars of Magdalen College Oxford – to Mr Thomas Hutchinson for the term of 99 years – at £9 per annum. Deeds/1783.

2 Baskerville Road – 15th March 1884 – granted by The President & Scholars of Magdalen College Oxford – to Mr Charles Kynock for the term of 99 years – at £12 per annum. Curiously this deed is unsigned. Deeds/1377

Kynock became bankrupt before the last wrinkles of The Toast Rack development were resolved and this lead to Magdalen College having to resolve some issues with the setting out of Dorlcote Road where Kynock appears to have infringed on the common lands. A deal was done to the satisfaction of Magdalen College and The Metropolitan Board of Works’ successor body London County Council.

The Dorlcote Road of today certainly is not a standard 40′ wide road MBW standard road!

Read on The planning and building of The Magdalen Estate with Holloway Bros