The Wandle is a chalk stream in south west London that fell into disrepair due to urbanisation in the 60’s and 70’s despite its glorious history. It has happily since undergone considerable restoration with the help of the London Wildlife Trust and other organisations.
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The Wandle, Photo per http://www.wildlifetrusts.org/living-landscape/schemes/wandle-valley-living-landscape
Frederic M Halford and the Wandle
William Daniel of Famous Fishing a company specialising in chalk stream fly fishing in Wiltshire and Hampshire, (http://www.famousfishing.co.uk/ ) is a great angling historian and collector of angling artefacts.
Teffont Evias
During a visit to his home in the beautiful Wiltshire village of Teffont Evias two years ago, I noticed three mounted trout hanging on a wall in his sitting room. Two were browns caught by Frederic M Halford.
A brown trout caught by FM Halford
I asked William for some background on Halford’s fish. Here is his interesting reply:
Both these trout were taken by Halford from the Wandle in 1869. Their capture is described in his Autobiography. The first was caught on a Coachman, which later embarrassed him as it was a fancy fly. The second was on a sedge pattern. There was a sewage pipe on the Wandle and big trout liked to lie under it. Halford couldn’t reach them the first year he fished on the Carshalton beat of the Wandle, because of an overhanging branch so he knocked on the door of the house opposite and the owner got his gardener to mark the offending branches with white paint under Halford’s supervision. The following spring he arrived with great anticipation and caught the first fish on May 20th.
The inscription in the glass case
There is some doubt about the exact date of the second because the date on the case is not the same as in his autobiography, and there are no diaries for this period. But he frequently made mistakes as pointed out by Tony Hayter in FM Halford and the ‘Dry fly Revolution’.
Admiral Lord Nelson and the Wandle
I didn’t know it but Admiral Lord Nelson was a regular fisher on this stream as well. He bought Merton Place in September 1801, a country estate in an ancient Surrey village just across the Wandle from an Abbey whose history goes back to the Norman Conquest.
At the time the Wandle was one of the most famous chalk streams in the world, a stream where Frederic Halford would later learn to fish a dry fly on the stretch of its headwaters in Carshalton.
Last week from Matthew Holden on the Wandle
A friend living in London, Matthew Holden, wrote to say;
Two weeks ago I bumped into a fantastic Danish chap while practicing casting in Ravensbury Park on the River Wandle, a chalk stream we have in London. I showed him a productive spot I know well and he landed his first ever chub. He then insisted I should have a cast and here are shots of the stream and the nipper I got!
Tom Sutcliffe
