In a deep loop of the River Thames, between the tidal Chelsea Creek and the old Peterborough estate, west of Wandsworth Bridge, its northern edge is New King's Road.

Its earliest recorded landowner was John de Saundeford in the reign of Edward I. Barbara Denny, a contemporary historian, wrote that King Henry VIII granted the manor of Sandford to the Abbot of Westminster, but that in 1549 it returned to the Crown.

Singing nightingales in the 17th-century are said to have arrested the attention of essayist and politician, Joseph Addison (1672–1719), who came to live in his 'retreat' hereabouts, but probably not in Sandford Manor House, which is in present-day Rewell Street, and Grade II* listed.

As distinct from ownership, settlement of the area did not begin till the Elizabethan era, as can be inferred from this extract from Féret:A small volume might, indeed, be filled by citations of similar entries referring to lands which had belonged to Goldhawk 'at the Sand.'

p. 83)[4]In spite of its rural charms, the area was affected by flooding, dampness and the effluent descending from Counter's Creek, sometimes referred to as a sewer, so by the early 19th-century, the estate was in decline.

On an eight-acre site in Sands End, just east of Wandsworth Bridge, the Polish-born entrepreneur, Henry Lowenfeld built the Kops Brewery that started production in 1890.

[citation needed] Because of the notoriously poor transport links for the area (including Chelsea Harbour), including the absence of tube stations due to the many medieval plague pits which deterred their building in Victorian times, the nearby Imperial Wharf station was opened on 27 September 2009, providing direct rail links with Clapham Junction and Willesden Junction via Kensington (Olympia).

[10] In October 2008 an interactive local history website, Sands End Revisited, was published with photos and memories from residents closed in 2015, but e-mail contact available.