Some 55 historic watercolours of Wimbledon, painted over two centuries between 1780 and 1985, will go on display in the first ever exhibition at the brand new Village Hall Trust Gallery, opening tomorrow Saturday, February 4.

The show, entitled Town and Country Wimbledon, is the first opportunity to see many of the works collected by the Museum of Wimbledon since its foundation 96 years ago in 1916.

The paintings have been acquired through donations, bequests and works by new local artists. The new gallery provides an extension to the Museum itself at 22 Ridgway and entry to this exhibition is via the Museum’s Perry Room on weekend afternoons.

The watercolours depict Wimbledon’s rural and urban heritage through works by local painters over 200 years.

The earliest work, by John Melchior Barralet, depicts St Mary’s Church c1780. It is the collection’s only contemporary drawing of the medieval church and was made shortly before its rebuilding in 1788. A tithe barn shown was dismantled in the 1860s to allow for an extension to the churchyard.

Other very early works include Maria Marryat’s The Salon at Wimbledon House, Parkside, c.1815. and John Chessell Buckler’s monochrome of Eagle House in 1827.

Wimbledon House Parkside, which had one of the region’s finest gardens stretching over 100 acres, was demolished at the start of the 20th century but Eagle House, still standing in the High Street, is Wimbledon’s second oldest building, dating back to 1613.

By contrast, other works in the exhibition include a rural Copse Hill as recently as 1931, Croft’s Timber Yard at West Place in 1910, and scenes from the annual National Rifle Association camp on the Common in the 1870s.

Public art exhibitions in Wimbledon date back to 1876 when the Wimbledon Art & Benevolent Society staged its first charity fund-raising show of oils and water-colours in the Village Hall. This became an annual event and gradually diversified to include photographs, wood carving, sculpture, book binding and needlework. The Art & Benevolent Society changed its name in 1906 to the Wimbledon Arts and Crafts Society.

In that year, Richardson Evans, then a recent founder of what later became the Wimbledon Society, appealed to local artists to lend pictures for an exhibition illustrating ‘Old and Picturesque Wimbledon’ before it disappeared forever. Many of the pictures loaned became permanent and helped create a collection for the Museum after it was established at the Village Hall during the First World War.

Future Museum of Wimbledon exhibitions in the new gallery will feature the hundreds of other images from the collection, which also includes photographs, topographical engravings, sketches, 19th century steel engravings and newsprint, original drawings and etchings. Town and Country Wimbledon runs until 25 April.

After that, until the next exhibition by the Museum itself, the gallery will be used by local artists and schools with access via the Village Hall entrance in Lingfield Road.

The Wimbledon Society is working with the Wimbledon Guardian to ensure that you, the readers, can share the fascinating discoveries that continue to emerge about our local heritage.

For more information, visit wimbledonsociety.org.uk and www.wimbledonmuseum.org.uk.

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