Like Cricklewood high street in the city’s north west, Tooting Broadway in south London follows the path of an ancient Roman Road. Peter Marshall took a walk along it in 1990, taking photos of the people and the shops as he went. What we love about Peter’s pictures is that he shows us the everyday things we saw but didn’t much notice. Now that we get to look again, things looks strangely familiar.
Dentist’s window in Tooting, south London, 1990
Located in the London Borough of Wandsworth, Tooting is 5 miles south south-west of Charing Cross, London’s geographic centre. Settled since pre-Saxon times, there are a few theories as to how the place got its name. Tooting appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Totinges. It could refer to the people of Tota, in which Tota may have been a local Anglo-Saxon chieftain. It could be derived from an old meaning of the verb to tout, to look out, a reference to a watchtower here on the road to London.
Mitcham Rd, Tooting, Wandsworth, 1990
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