Worple Road SW19

Location

Wimbledon is a district of south-west London, England, 7 miles (11.3 km) south-west of the centre of London at Charing Cross, in the London Borough of Merton, south of Wandsworth, northeast of New Malden, north-west of Mitcham, West of Streatham and north of Sutton. Wimbledon had a population of 68,187 in 2011 which includes the electoral wards of Abbey, Dundonald, Hillside, Trinity, Village, Raynes Park and Wimbledon Park. These flats are within easy reach of the prestigious All England Tennis Club and are surrounded by open green spaces.
It is home to the Wimbledon Tennis Championships and New Wimbledon Theatre and contains the ever popular Wimbledon Common, one of the largest areas of common land in London. The residential and retail area is split into two sections known as the "village" and the "town", with the High Street being the rebuilding of the original medieval village, and the "town" having first developed gradually after the building of the railway station in 1838.

Wimbledon has been inhabited since at least the Iron Age when the hill fort on Wimbledon Common is thought to have been constructed. and is mentioned in The Doomsday Book. Wimbledon was part of the manor of Mortlake. The ownership of the manor of Wimbledon changed between various wealthy families many times during its history, and the area also attracted other wealthy families who built large houses such as Eagle House, Wimbledon Manor House and Warren House. The village developed with a stable rural population coexisting alongside nobility and wealthy merchants from the city. In the 18th century the Dog and Fox public house became a stop on the stagecoach run from London to Portsmouth, then in 1838, the London and South Western Railway (L&SWR) opened a station to the south-east of the village at the bottom of Wimbledon Hill. The location of the station shifted the focus of the town's subsequent growth away from the original village centre.

Wimbledon had its own borough larger than its historic boundaries while still in the county of Surrey; it was absorbed into the London Borough of Merton as part of the creation of Greater London in 1965. Since 2005, the north and west of the Borough have been represented in Westminster by Stephen Hammond, a Conservative MP. The east and south of the Borough are represented by Siobhain McDonagh, a Labour MP.

It has established minority groups; among the most prominent are British Asians (including British Sri Lankans), British Ghanaians, Polish and Irish people.

Wimbledon, a small farming locality in New Zealand, was named after this district in the 1880s after a local resident shot a bullock from a considerable distance away. The shot was considered by onlookers to be worthy of the rifle-shooting championships held in Wimbledon at the time.