The William Morris, Merton Abbey Mills

My first trip back to Colliers Wood in fourteen years proved a bit of a shock. The concrete wasteland that used to yawn out next to the giant silver Sainsbury’s has actually been made worse over the stretch of years. It’s no longer empty, granted, but what has filled the space is a particularly cheap and nasty development: a shitty hotel, some anonymous retail sheds, prefab fast food joints and various blocks of flats that, to my eyes at least, look like an industrial development whose purpose was hastily changed at the final hour. Rather than standing out, as it used to do, the market, composed of the by-now rather shabby refurbs of William Morris’ old factory buildings, seems to cower behind the faceless jumble of modern commercialism that threatens to engulf it, in many ways proving Morris’ point about the profound feelings of alienation that are engendered by the culture of mass production.

With such a startling change to the surrounding area, I was worried about the effect on the William Morris pub, which used to be a favourite of mine back when I lived in the area. Was it, indeed, even there anymore? I needn’t have worried. Housed in one of the old mill buildings, sitting right on the bank of the River Wandle, it’s still a prime pub location and seemed mostly to have carried on like before – even boasting the same carpet at the rear, where a long windowed terrace looks out over the river. There does seem to have been a half-arsed attempt at refurbishment at some point in the past, although thankfully the effects aren’t too aesthetically painful, and the Thai restaurant in the annex has gone, with the food offered now being fairly standard, if tasty, pub grub. The seating out by the bank of the river, the upstairs terrace and the lovely attic room have all been maintained, thus preserving the pub’s status as a decent place to while away a summer’s evening. The several real ales on tap suggest the owners have continued the pub’s previous tradition of serving up a decent pint of beer. Whilst William Morris, were he transported to the current age, might be horrified by the march of a bland and omnivorous capitalism onto an area he sought to protect from its excesses, I can’t help feeling he would have been rather pleased by the pub that still bears his name.

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