Swaby Road Recreation Ground - information from the London Historic Parks and Gardens Trust

Swaby Road/Leckford Road/Lidiard Road, SW18.  0.2 hectare public garden with a playground in the Magdalen Park Estate conservation area

Public transport: Rail to Earlsfield Station

The land here was owned by Magdalen College Oxford and in the early C20th it was planned to build Magdalen Park Estate as a Garden Suburb here, designed by E P Warren. By WWI houses between Garratt Lane and Swaby Road, and part between Lyford Road and Ellerton Road had been built but the scheme was essentially truncated when in the 1920s Wandsworth Council purchased the area between Swaby Road and Open View for the Openview Estate, and in the 1930s the area between Fieldview and Ellerton Road for the Fieldview Estate. The Openview Estate was laid out with symmetrical groups of houses with Swaby Road Recreation Ground as a small rectangular of public open space. Two streets, Lidiard and Leckford Roads, run off at 45 degrees from the recreation ground providing longer roads than an orthodox street grid would.

See also Godley Road Recreation Ground.