Wimbledon common was pivotal in the battles over metropolitan commons in the 1860s, its transformation from manorial waste to a playground, ‘the pearl of London’s open spaces’, forming a central strand in its history. The debates over the future of the common played a prominent part in the revolution in attitudes to common land in the mid-nineteenth century – and in the 1970s the imaginary litter-recycling ‘Wombles of Wimbledon Common’ immortalised, through story and song, the place of common land in modern urban life. With the nearby open space of Richmond Park, Wimbledon Common and the adjacent Putney Heath form one of the largest of London’s green lungs, surrounded by the urban areas of Putney, Wimbledon, Kingston and Richmond.

Wimbledon Common and Putney Heath comprise 1,140 acres (460 ha) of woodland and open ground. They form a fairly level plateau of river gravels at c.52m above sea level, capping the London Clay, which outcrops on the western slopes of the common, where the land drops to the valley of the Beverley Brook. Together, the commons represent the bulk of the manorial waste of the manor of Wimbledon and also include a small area which was part of the waste of the manor of Battersea and Wandsworth; the Earls Spencer were lords of both manors from the eighteenth century.

Records of the manor court make it possible to reconstruct the use and regulation of the common from 1462 to the mid-seventeenth century. From the earliest records, there is evidence of pressure on the common – from those without common rights overburdening the common with livestock; from unringed pigs churning up the soil; from those taking fuel illicitly or excessively. The common’s fuel resources, in particular, not only firewood but also gorse (‘furze’) and bushes, were in high demand. In the decade after 1500 men were presented for cutting more fuel (namely ‘firses et bushes’) on the common ‘than seems necessary or fitting’; their number included a brewer, who took ‘furze, thorns and bushes’ in excess to burn in his brewhouse. Regulations aimed at reducing demand for fuel were imposed in the 1520s, when bakers, brewers and undertenants (‘undersettes’) were forbidden from taking wood or furze from the common.