At the top of the road, The Swan pub is undergoing renovations - or rather, it's having a complete make-over, and becoming, of course, a gastropub (the menus aren't yet up on line. We shall see) called The Cavendish. "Cavendish," after Henry Jones, who wrote under the name "Cavendish" - apparently! - who came from Wimbledon, and who, after training as a surgeon, changed tack entirely, and became an expert of whist - codifying its rules, and writing about it extensively - and being a member of the All England Croquet Club, proposing that one of its lawns be set aside for the new sport of lawn tennis ... and that went pretty well, in the long run, even though it ebbed somewhat in the last years of the C19th.
"Be sure," we're told on the rather clumsily written webpage, "Be sure to visit us for a delicious roast after your sunday morning walk around the commons, Cannizaro Park and Rushmere pond." I suspect I'd be more likely to choose something off the "rotating cocktail menu," especially after walking round Rushmere at the end of a grey, grey afternoon, and seeing that the number of live swans (and an adolescent cygnet) swimming gently round it has increased exponentially.
But in a few years' time, who will remember that the Cavendish was ever called The Swan (or, for that matter, that there was another and much better pub a few doors down, called the King of Denmark - closed in 2007, demolished 2011, and a building that now houses a small branch of the Co-op erected on its site). It had a small geranium filled garden - well, yard - out back, and was much more friendly than the Swan - although that shifted somewhat in later years.
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