The Craig Telescope

It’s a bank holiday.  Bank holidays in lockdown are odd things but it’s always welcome to be able to spend more time outside and fewer hours in front of a video call.  Today, we did another 10-mile local history walk featuring the delights of Earlsfield and Wandsworth Common.  En route there were a couple of cemeteries and directions led us through an industrial estate that we’ve never explored before but was, in reality, almost on our doorstep when we lived in Earlsfield.

The premise of the walk was The Craig Telescope. Described as an “eccentric telescope” by the official history website, it was constricted on Wandsworth Common in 1852 and was one of the biggest of time.  There is almost no evidence that it stood somewhere around here today, although the bricks from the tower were supposedly reused to construct the nearby Surrey Tavern.  There may - or may not - have been a brick tower stood where my camera was pointed. The tower held up a tube (the telescope) which was mounted on one side. It must have been an interesting sight even though it appears to have been regarded as a failure and was gone by around about 1870.