Rose & Crown Hotel |
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The Rose and Crown in Wimbledon's oldest inn still standing in it's original form, and arguably the most important. Built circa 1650, it later became the venue for the vestry meetings, adjourned from St Mary's Church, and for the meetings of the local friendly society. It is known that the inn was here by 1659 as a trade token held at Wimbledon Museum bears this date well as name of the then landlord T E Heburne. At that time, during the Commonwealth, the inn was known as the "Sign of the Rose", the "Crown" not being added untill the Restoration in 1660. The only clue that this inn may have been in existence in some form earlier in the century was when Treswell's survey of the manor in 1617 showed a bowling alley on this site; these were usually adjacent to inns of taverns, though an inn was not specifically mentioned in the survey. By 1780 there was a regular stagecoach service three times a week from the Rose and Crown to London via Putney. The "Wimbledon Machine" not only carried passengers but also brought the London newspapers to Wimbledon, and in the next century was doubling as a postal service. The route across the Putney Heath and Wimbledon common was a dangerous one and highway men such as Dick Turpin often held up the stage coaches. A short walk from the hotel is the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet club, home to the world-renowned annual grass tennis championships. In August 1907 Vere Thomas St Leger Goold, who won the Wimbledon men's title in 1879 at the age of 25, was found at Marseilles station with the dismembered corpse of a woman inside his trunk. The dead woman was Mme.Liven, to whom Leger owed a substantial amount of money from frequent drinking and gambling. Leger, whose tennis career had tapered off after his Wimbledon win, was sentenced to the penal servitude for life and died two years later on Devil's Island |
