Free
#179
Wandle Industrial Museum
A focused community museum interpreting the River Wandle’s working valley—from calico-printing and dyeing at Merton Abbey Mills to snuff, brewing and early railways. Compact displays use tools, blocks and maps to show how a small river powered outsized innovations on London’s southern edge.
Opening Hours
Sunday: 2:00 PM – 5:00 PM
Wednesday: 1:00 PM – 4:00 PM
What's not to miss inside?
Morris & Co. on the Wandle
Connects William Morris’s workshop (at Merton Abbey from 1881) to local water-powered printing and dyeing.Original printing blocks and pattern samples explain how the river’s clean, mineral-light water suited indigo and madder dyes.
📍 Textiles gallery
Surrey Iron Railway
Highlights one of the world’s earliest public railways (horse-drawn, opened 1803) serving Wandle industries.Before steam, iron-plated wagonways hauled cloth, flour and coal along the valley’s mills.
📍 Transport case and maps
Snuff & Lavender
Shows how local botany fed manufacture—lavender fields and herb-growing supported perfume, soap and snuff milling.Label tins, mortars and sieves reveal a chain from field to fragrance.
📍 Mitcham trades section
Inspire your Friends
- William Morris moved his firm to the former Merton Priory site in 1881; the Wandle’s water chemistry made it a destination for high-quality dyeing long before his arrival.
- The Surrey Iron Railway—authorised 1801, opened 1803—was a freight-only, horse-worked plateway: an early public railway decades before steam main lines.
- Mitcham’s commercial lavender was nationally renowned in the 18th–19th centuries, feeding a regional network of distillers and soapmakers along the Wandle.
