Originally common land for the parishes of Battersea and Clapham, William Hewer was among the early Londoners to build adjacent to it.

The land had been used for cricket in 1700[2] and was drained in the 1760s,[3] and from the 1790s onwards fine houses were built around the common as fashionable dwellings for wealthy business people in what was then a village detached from metropolitan London.

Some later residents were members of the Clapham Sect of evangelical reformers and slavery abolitionists, including William Wilberforce, Lord Teignmouth and Henry Thornton.

[4] In the early 1770s, during his stay in London representing America in affairs of the state, Benjamin Franklin had written a paper explaining how he used the ponds for science experiments, and in developing a "magic" trick.

"I fetched out a cruet of oil and dropt a little of it on the water ... though not more than a teaspoon full, produced an instant calm over a space of several yards square."

[8] As London expanded in the 19th century, Clapham was absorbed into the capital, with most of the remaining palatial or agricultural estates replaced with terraced housing by the early 1900s.

[9] In 1911, Scottish evangelist and teacher Oswald Chambers founded and was principal of the Bible Training College in Clapham Common, an "embarrassingly elegant" property situated at 45 North Side that had been purchased by the Pentecostal League of Prayer.

[13] In 2021, Foot Locker, in partnership with the NBA, completed the refurbishment of the Clapham Common Basketball Court.

Eagle Pond was extensively refurbished in 2005 when it was completely drained, landscaped and replanted to provide a better habitat for the fish it contained.

In 2005–2006, a full restoration of the bandstand and surrounding landscape took place, partly funded by an £895,000 lottery grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund matched by £300,000 from Lambeth Council and a further £100,000 from local fundraising efforts and the proceeds of the Ben and Jerry's Summer Sundae event held on the common.

[24][31] The drainage bund around the bandstand was restored with granite setts during the summer of 2011 at a cost of £12,000 to resolve design faults in the earlier works.