Standing before Thornhill House, you might not realize that its walls hold fragments of history, salvaged from a vanished world. The house itself was built in 1890, but its soul whispers of a grand past. A century ago, a Kensington builder named Wakefield, looking to escape the smog and find some peace for his troubled health, heard tales of a magnificent manor being demolished in nearby Wandsworth. It was Wandsworth Manor, built around 1670. The builder, seeing the house’s magnificent panelling and staircase as a treasure waiting to be rediscovered, bought it at auction, and transported its heart, brick-by-brick, to Putney. He then recreated the manor’s grandeur, incorporating the salvaged pieces into the new house, which he named after Sir James Thornhill, the English painter famous for the murals adorning St. Paul’s Cathedral. It’s worth noting that some of the intricate floorboards, the ones underneath your feet, even traveled across the Thames from the Tivoli Theatre, another lost landmark of London. Thornhill House is a testament to preservation, a place where history lives on, not just in the paint on the walls, but in the very wood that forms its structure, whispers of another time.
Southfields Methodist Church
Curiosity stirred within the heart of Southfields as a new chapter began. Southfields Methodist Church held its first public service