122 THE BRIGHTON ROAD 



ways across the bleak downs, severally through 

 Smitham Bottom and Caterham. 



Beside that stream ran from 1805 until about 1840 the 

 rails of that long-forgotten pioneer of railways in these 

 parts, the " Surrey Iron Railway." This was a primi- 

 tive line constructed for the purpose of affording cheap 

 and quick transport for coals, bricks, and other heavy 

 goods, originally between Wandsworth and Croydon, 

 but extended in 1805 to Merstham, where quarries of 

 limestone and beds of Fuller's earth are situated. 



This railway was the outcome of a project first 

 mooted in 1799, for a canal from Wandsworth to 

 Croydon. It was abandoned because of the injury 

 that might have been caused to the wharves and 

 factories already existing numerously along the course 

 of the Wandle, and a railway substituted. The Act 

 of Parliament was obtained in 1800, and the line 

 constructed to Croydon in the following year, at a 

 cost of about £27,000. It was not a railway in the 

 modern sense, and the haulage was by horses, who 

 dragged the clumsy waggons along at the rate of about 

 four miles an hour. The rails, fixed upon stone blocks, 

 were quite different from those of modern railways 

 or tramways, being just lengths of angle-iron into 

 which the wheels of the waggons fitted : L- -J 

 Thus, in contradistinction from all other railway or 

 tramway practice, the flanges were not on the 

 wheels, but on the rails themselves. The very 

 frugal object of this was to enable the waggons 

 to travel on ordinary roads, if necessity arose. 



From the point where the Wandle flows into the 

 Thames, at Wandsworth, along the levels past 

 Earlsfield and Garratt, the railway went in double 

 track ; continuing by Merton Abbey, Mitcham (where 

 the present lane called " Tramway Path ' marks its 

 course) and across Mitcham Common into Croydon by 

 wav of what is now called Church Street, but was 

 then known as ' Iron Road." Thence along South- 

 bridge Lane and the course of the Bourne, it was 

 continued to Purley, whence it climbed Smitham 



