There would have been no Wandsworth, either in fact or in name, had there been no Wandle, for the water-power that brought prosperity to the mills also provided a natural outlet for the manufacturers; and so there early grew up a series of wharves by the river's mouth that have done a great quantity of business at any period during these last two hundred years. Aubrey, indeed, says that in his time there were many factories here, and that here were made "brass plates for kettles, skellets, and frying-pans, by Dutchmen, who kept it a mystery." Many of these old Dutchmen's places of business lasted until comparatively recent years, and were known as the "Frying Pan Houses." The greater part, however, of old Wandsworth is gone. Gone, too, is the hamlet of Garratt, whose mock elections of a Mayor caused such convivial excitement a century ago. But a few old houses of a Dutch style of architecture still remain to show what manner of place this was before it had become suburban and its spacious old architecture destroyed to make way for the interminable back streets where City clerkdom dwells in houselets composed of slack-baked bricks built on ash-heaps, "comprising" four cupboards, miscalled "rooms," with what the estate-agent magniloquently terms "the usual domestic offices." Here and there in the High Street and on Wandsworth Plain stand these remains of Old Wandsworth, and they give a distinct _cachet_ to "the village." But the fury of the dabblers in bricks and mortar continues unabated, and they will not last long. One of the oldest houses here was destroyed some years back, and on its site stands a new police-station. This was the well-known "Sword House," which took its name, not from the making of swords, but from a _chevaux de frise_ of claymores, of which, up to the beginning of the present reign, some few vestiges were left. The story goes that the occupant of the house was a retired officer of the army who had taken part in the defeat of the Scotch rebels at Culloden, and had collected a number of claymores for the protection of his house at Wandsworth, at that time a secluded place round whose outskirts hung a number of footpads. He defended the outer walls of his residence with these weapons, but they gradually disappeared, being stolen, one by one, by timid and peaceable wayfarers as some sort of protection against the gentry who rendered the suburbs dangerous o' nights. [Sidenote: _A PIOUS BENEFACTOR_]