Wimbledon Village: The Hill, the Common and Access

Two Wimbledons and the hill between them

Wimbledon town centre, with its station and shops, sits at the bottom of the hill. Wimbledon Village, with its High Street, boutiques and restaurants, sits at the top beside the common. Wimbledon Hill Road connects them, and it is steep, two-way and frequently slow. People who assume the two are interchangeable end up a long uphill walk from where they meant to be, so it is worth being explicit about which one you mean.

The village High Street

Wimbledon High Street is short, narrow and lined with pay bays that are occupied for most of the day. There is very little room for a vehicle to pause without holding up the traffic behind, and the pavements are busy from mid-morning. Church Road, Lingfield Road and the streets running off the High Street give a driver somewhere more workable, and the walk from any of them is a minute or two at most.

• Lingfield Road and Marryat Road for the streets west of the High Street
• Church Road for the northern side towards the tennis grounds
• Southside Common and West Side Common for anything facing the common itself

The common and the roads around it

Wimbledon Common is large, open and crossed by unmade tracks that are not vehicle routes. The roads around its edge, particularly Parkside on the eastern side and Camp Road towards the windmill, carry traffic but offer limited stopping. Horse riders use the common and the surrounding bridleways, which is a genuine consideration for a driver on the smaller lanes. For a walk on the common, naming the car park or the entrance rather than the common itself avoids a long detour.

Tournament fortnight

For two weeks each summer the district changes completely. Church Road and the roads around the grounds operate under temporary restrictions, residents' parking arrangements are extended, and the pedestrian flow between the station and the grounds fills the pavements and spills into the road. Set-down and pickup points for the tournament are designated and move from year to year, so an arrangement that worked last summer should be confirmed rather than assumed.

Outside those two weeks the same roads are simply pleasant suburban streets, which is why advice about Wimbledon so often depends entirely on the date.

The residential streets

The roads between the village and the common, including Marryat Road, Burghley Road, Calonne Road and Somerset Road, are wide by London standards with substantial houses, many behind gates. Where a property has its own drive the arrival is straightforward, and where it does not the street usually has room for a brief pause. That combination makes the village one of the easier parts of south-west London to arrive in, tournament fortnight excepted.

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