On Tuesday 5th of August, 2025, I fulfilled a long held aspiration to follow Algernon Charles Swinburne on his daily walk from his home at The Pines (today no. 11), on Putney Hill, to Wimbledon High Street, across Putney Heath and Wimbledon Common.
The Pines on Putney Hill
Theodore Watts-Dunton moved into the house in 1979. Swinburne moved in to live with Watts-Dunton until the former's death in 1909. Watts-Dunton died in 1914.
Watts-Dunton also took in artist Henry Treffy Dunn and provided a studio for him at The Pines until his death in 1899.
From The Pines I walked up Putney Hill (designated the A219 in the 1920s), to reach the pedestrian underpasses and walkways which enabled me to cross the A3, better known in Swinburne's time as the Portsmouth Road.
I crossed Putney Heath and Wimbledon Common, to pass by the windmill at the heart of the Common. This would have been a landmark that was very familier to Swinburne.
From the windmill I crossed the remainder of the Common, which is a wide open and 'rural' space close to the Wimbledon suburbs.
Having crossed Wimbledon Common, I entered Wimbledon's High Street from its west end, to visit the pub that was central to Swinburne's daily walk, The Rose and Crown.
A plaque on the outside front wall recognises the Swinburne association, stating that he often met Leigh Hunt here, though I must admit to having no knowledge of the Hunt connection.
This is a Young's pub, and still retains its Victorian flavour, though I understand that there have been internal modifications to the room layouts over recent decades.
After a visit to the Rose and Crown, Swinburne would often walk on down the High Street to the Misses Frost’s stationers and
bookshop at the corner of the Ridgway to buy a daily paper or
a further supply of the blue foolscap he always used for writing. He also ordered his books from the Frost's. I photographed the curving terrace of Victorian shops on the corner of the High Street and Ridgway, in the assumption that the bookshop might have been one of these. (If the shop was on the opposite corner, it has been demolished and replaced by the current Tescos Express.)
After this, it only remained for me to retrace my steps, as Swinburne would have done, back across the Common and the Heath, to his Putney home at The Pines.
