Malden, the Anglo-Saxon name of which signifies the Hill of the Cross, has now even less that is distinctive about it than Merton, but it is noteworthy as having been the first site of the college referred to above, founded in 1240 by Walter de Merton, who at that date bought Malden Manor, the history of which can be traced back to the time of the Doomsday Survey, when with that of the neighbouring Chessington it was the property of Richard de Tonbridge. Merton College retained its estate at Mitcham until the dissolution of the monasteries, when Henry VIII. took 120 acres of it—now part of the populous suburb known as Worcester Park—to add them to the grounds of Nonsuch Palace. Later Queen Elizabeth confiscated the manors of Malden and Chessington with the advowsons of both livings for a term of no less than five hundred years, salving her conscience by paying a nominal rent of forty pounds, but in the reign of her successor the members of the college succeeded in bringing about a compromise, by the terms of which the then owner of the lease and his heirs were allowed to retain it for another eighty years.
The parish church of Malden, though it has been again and again restored, still retains traces of Saxon work in the walls of the chancel, that now serves as an aisle of the greatly enlarged building, and in the east window are the arms of Walter de Merton and of Bishop Ravis, who occupied the see of London in the early nineteenth century, whilst the position occupied by the altar in the first chapel is marked by a stone slab bearing the inscription: 'Here stood the Lord's Table on Maeldune, the Hill of the Cross for nigh a thousand years.'
Some two miles from Merton is the still secluded village of Morden, or the settlement on the great hill, the manor of which belonged at the time of the Conquest to the abbey of Westminster, and became the property of the Crown on the dissolution of the monasteries. It was granted by Edward VI. to Edward Whitchurch and Lionel Ducket, and since then has changed hands many times. Its ancient manor-house is still represented by a mansion known as Morden Hall, and its parish church retains the tower of a much earlier building, whilst on its walls hang many fine old brasses and a number of hatchments of great antiquarian interest.
Mitcham
The extensive parish of Mitcham, that stretches away from Merton and Morden to Beddington, Carshalton, and Croydon on the south, and on the east to Streatham and Norwood includes one of the most beautiful commons near London, set in a border of fields planted with lavender bushes and sweet-smelling herbs. It is associated, moreover, with many interesting memories, and at the time of the Conquest was an extremely valuable property, including no less than five manors that were later reduced to three, which changed hands so often that it is almost impossible to trace their history. It is enough to add that Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, owned a house at Mitcham that still bears his name, that Sir Walter Raleigh occupied another for some time that belonged to his wife, Elizabeth Throckmorton, and that in a mansion now pulled down Sir Julius Cæsar received Queen Elizabeth in 1598, an honour that according to his own account cost him considerably more than £700. On the banks of the Wandle, in a villa known as Grove House, lived Sir Thomas More, and two centuries later it was the home of a man of a very different type, Lord Clive, who in 1774, just before he took his own life, gave it to the great lawyer Alexander Wedderburn, the future Lord Chancellor of England, who had defended him at his trial. In 1789 Grove House was bought by the London banker Sir Samuel Hoare, who often showed hospitality in it to Hannah More, the Wilberforces and the Macaulays. Dr. Donne, the famous Dean of St. Paul, who died in 1631, was also at one time a resident at Mitcham; Charles Mathews, who was to make such a great reputation as a comedian, used to ride over on his pony for a gallop on Mitcham Common when he was at school at Clapham; and Dr. Johnson was fond of dining in the neighbourhood when he was the guest of Mrs. Thrale at Streatham.
The original village of Mitcham, picturesquely situated on the Wandle, that here works several mills, is now but the nucleus of a rapidly growing town; and it is very much the same with its neighbour Tooting, that retains little except the common, which is now its chief distinction, to recall the days when Queen Elizabeth was the guest of the lord of the manor, Lord Burghley, or those a century later, when the author of Robinson Crusoe lived in a little house on the road that still bears his name and founded the conventicle now replaced by the Defoe Presbyterian chapel. The ancient parish church of Tooting, of which that conventicle soon became a serious rival, was pulled down some eighty years ago to make room for a modern successor; of the beautiful convent of the Holy Cross, that once stood just without the village, and is said to have been connected with the church by a subterranean passage, not a trace remains; whilst a few dignified-looking mansions with wrought-iron entrance-gates, and the two inns known as the Castle and the Angel, are the only houses with any claim to antiquity.