[4] The name is shown on J. Cary's 1786 map of the London area as "Wimbleton", and the current spelling appears to have been settled on relatively recently in the early 19th century, the last in a long line of variations.

The manor was held by the church until 1398 when Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury fell out of favour with Richard II and was exiled.

The manor was next held by Henry VIII's last wife and widow Catherine Parr until her death in 1548 when it again reverted to the monarch.

In the 1550s, Henry's daughter, Mary I, granted the manor to Cardinal Reginald Pole who held it until his death in 1558 when it once again become royal property.

The Cecil family retained the manor for fifty years, before it was bought by Charles I in 1638 for his Queen, Henrietta Maria.

The Dowager Queen sold the manor in 1661 to George Digby, 2nd Earl of Bristol, who employed John Evelyn to improve and update the landscape in accordance with the latest fashions, including grottos and fountains.

The next owner was Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, who increased the land belonging to the manor and completed the construction of a house to replace Jansen's unfinished effort in 1735.

The village continued to grow and the 18th-century introduction of stagecoach services from the Dog and Fox made the journey to London routine, although not without the risk of being held-up by highwaymen, such as Jerry Abershawe on the Portsmouth Road.

Wimbledon House, a separate residence close to the village at the south end of Parkside (near Peek Crescent), was home in the 1790s to the exiled French statesman Vicomte de Calonne, and later to the mother of the writer Frederick Marryat.

The first decades of the 19th century were relatively quiet for Wimbledon, with a stable rural population coexisting alongside nobility and wealthy merchants from the city.

Renewed upheaval came in 1838, when the opening of the London and South Western Railway (L&SWR) brought a station to the south-east of the village, at the bottom of Wimbledon Hill.

In 1864, the Spencers attempted to get parliamentary permission[6] to enclose the common as a new park with a house and gardens and to sell part for building.

Following an enquiry, permission was refused and a board of conservators was established in 1871 to take ownership of the common and preserve it in its natural condition.

From under 2,700 residents recorded in the 1851 census, the population grew by a minimum of 60 per cent each decade up to 1901, to increase fifteen-fold in fifty years.

In 1931, the council built a new red brick and Portland stone Town Hall next to the station, on the corner of Queen's Road and Wimbledon Bridge.

Damage to housing stock in Wimbledon and other parts of London during World War II led to a final major building phase when many earlier Victorian houses with large grounds in Wimbledon Park were sub-divided into flats or demolished and replaced with apartment blocks.

Other parts of Wimbledon Park, which had previously escaped being built upon, saw local authority estates constructed by the borough council, to house some of those who had lost their homes.

[17] Wimbledon is covered by several wards in the London Borough of Merton, making it difficult to produce statistics for the town as a whole.

The largest ethnic groups (up to 10%) in the wards according to the 2011 census are: At the time the Domesday Book was compiled (around 1086), Wimbledon was part of the manor of Mortlake.

"Love Wimbledon" was formed in April 2012, funded and managed by the business community to promote and enhance the town centre.

[29] In the 1870s, at the bottom of the hill on land between the railway line and Worple Road, the All-England Croquet Club had begun to hold its annual championships.

The late Richard Milward MA, a local historian, researched the background of horses in Wimbledon over the years and found that the first recorded stables belonged to the Lord of the Manor, and are detailed in the Estate's accounts of 1236–37.

Daniel Lysons published The Environs of London: being a historical account of the towns, villages, and hamlets, within twelve miles of that capital in which he wrote: "In the early part of the present century there were annual races upon this common, which had then a King's plate."

By the 1880s, however, the power and range of rifles had advanced to the extent that shooting in an increasingly populated area was no longer considered safe.

[32] AFC Wimbledon, the phoenix club founded to replace the departed team (see Milton Keynes Dons), played for a number of years in Kingston upon Thames; in 2020, however, they moved into a new stadium, again named Plough Lane, on the site of the former greyhound track and a short distance from its namesake.

[44] The theatre was very popular between the wars, with appearances by Gracie Fields, Sybil Thorndike, Ivor Novello, Markova and Noël Coward.

and Half A Sixpence, starring Tommy Steele, received their world premières at the theatre in the 1960s, before transferring to the West End.

Polka also has a creative learning studio, a garden, an outdoor playground, an indoor play area, exhibition spaces, and a cafe.

[47] It is also funded by the London Borough of Merton[48] and a number of private charitable trusts and foundations, individuals and firms.

Wimbledon was given as the site where the sixth Martian invasion cylinder landed in H. G. Wells' book The War of the Worlds and is mentioned briefly in the same author's The Time Machine and When the Sleeper Wakes.