The borough has one entry in the national festival: Cheam's Lumley Chapel, free and staffed all day on 12 September. Four more sit just over the boundary.
Heritage Open Days runs from Thursday 11 to Sunday 20 September. It is England’s largest festival of history and architecture, and everything in it is free.
The whole borough of Sutton has one entry in it.
That entry is the Lumley Chapel, in St Dunstan’s churchyard on Church Road, Cheam, SM3 8QH. It opens on Saturday 12 September, 10am to 3pm. There is no charge and no need to book, according to the festival’s own printable list for Sutton.
Why one open day matters here
The chapel is locked the rest of the time. To see it on an ordinary day you have to go and fetch a key first, from Cheam Library opposite the churchyard entrance, or from Whitehall Historic House on Malden Road. That is what the Churches Conservation Trust, which looks after the building, tells visitors to do.
On 12 September a Trust volunteer will be inside instead, with the door open. The Trust lists the day as a “Volunteer opening of the Lumley Chapel to the public”.
What is in it
The Lumley Chapel is the oldest building in Cheam. It is the former chancel of the medieval parish church of St Dunstan, and the only part of it left standing after the rest was pulled down in about 1865.
It is listed at Grade II*, the second highest of the three grades. Historic England first listed it on 28 August 1953, under list entry 1183440.
John, Lord Lumley, who died in 1609 and lived at Nonsuch, took the building over at the end of the 16th century and turned it into a burial place for his family. The festival entry for the chapel records what he left behind:
- a ceiling dated 1592
- the alabaster and marble monument to his first wife, Jane Fitzalan, who died in 1577
- a monument to his second wife, Elizabeth, who died in 1616
- more than 50 memorials in all, many moved in from the old church when it was demolished
Blocked half-round windows in the north wall suggest part of the fabric may be pre-Conquest.
The paths through the churchyard are uneven, so is the floor inside, and there is a large step into the chapel. Cheam station is about a third of a mile away.
The closest one is not in Sutton at all
The nearest open building to a Sutton Online town this year sits in Old Malden, in the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames, though its postal address is a Worcester Park one.
St John the Baptist, Church Road, Old Malden, KT4 7RY opens on four days and asks nobody to book:
- Friday 11 September, 11am to 4pm
- Saturday 12 September, 10am to 5pm
- Sunday 13 September, 2pm to 5pm
- Monday 14 September, 11am to 4pm
It is a Grade II listed Jacobean church of 1611, built on Saxon remains, with a Victorian nave added in 1875 and a further extension in 2004. The entry notes a heraldic window with 1611 glass carrying the arms of Walter de Merton, and history boards running from the Iron Age onwards. Malden Manor and Worcester Park stations both serve it, and the S1 from Worcester Park station stops at the Manor Drive and Church Road crossroads.
Four more, over the Surrey boundary
Sutton’s other neighbours are not much better served than Sutton. The festival’s list for Merton says plainly that “no events have been registered in Merton at the moment”. Croydon has one, a heritage garden at Shirley on 20 September. Kingston upon Thames has ten.
The rest of what is within reach is in Epsom and Ewell, the Surrey borough beyond Cheam and Worcester Park, and all of it is in the festival’s Epsom and Ewell list:
- Service Wing Museum, Nonsuch, Sunday 13 September, 12pm to 4pm. A tour of the Victorian kitchens and laundry at Nonsuch Mansion, run by the Friends of Nonsuch Servants’ Quarters, with the model of Henry VIII’s palace. No booking, but a cap of 50 people and about an hour each. Nonsuch Park is jointly managed by Sutton Council and Epsom and Ewell Borough Council, and the council’s own park page places it “in the northern part of the Borough of Epsom and Ewell between Cheam and Ewell Village”.
- Everyday Histories in Worcester Park from the Iron Age to the Computer Age, Monday 14 September, 2pm, at Bourne Hall in Ewell, roughly two miles south west of Worcester Park. David Rymill’s illustrated talk covers Cuddington and Malden, Nonsuch, the railway and the local jobs that followed, from banknote printing to early computing. You have to book, there are 30 places, and booking closes on 12 September, through Bourne Hall or on 020 8393 9571.
- Ewell Castle School, Saturday 19 September. Guided tours of the Senior School castle and Glyn House, 25 minutes each, starting at 12pm, 12.30pm, 1pm, 1.30pm, 2pm and 2.30pm, in the school’s centenary year. Booking required.
- Horton Cemetery, 9,000 People Remembered, Saturday 12 September, at Hook Road, Epsom, further out past Ewell. Exhibitions, talks and tours about the people buried there and the history of Epsom’s five asylums, with no booking needed.
Two Sutton buildings open that weekend anyway
Neither of these is part of Heritage Open Days. Both are free, and both are open on the festival’s first weekend.
- Whitehall Historic House, 1 Malden Road, Cheam SM3 8QD. Free drop-in tours led by heritage volunteers, Saturday 12 September, 12pm to 2pm, no booking. It is a couple of minutes’ walk from the Lumley Chapel, and it is one of the two places that holds the chapel key. The council warns that opening hours and tours depend on volunteers being available.
- Little Holland House, 40 Beeches Avenue, Carshalton SM5 3LW. Free, Sunday 13 September, with hourly slots from 11am, last entry at 4.30pm and closing at 5pm. Booking is recommended but not essential. The house was designed and built between 1902 and 1904 by Frank R. Dickinson, an artist and craftsman with no architectural training, who made the furnishings as well.
Both are listed on the council’s own events and bookings site.
What it means for you
If you want to see the inside of the Lumley Chapel without arranging a key, 12 September is the day, and you can walk to Whitehall the same lunchtime.
- The chapel is open 10am to 3pm on Saturday 12 September, free, no booking.
- Whitehall’s free tours run 12pm to 2pm on the same day, a short walk away.
- For Worcester Park readers, the Old Malden church is the easy one: four days, no booking, and the longest hours of anything on this list.
- The only date with a deadline is the Worcester Park talk at Bourne Hall: booking closes on 12 September, two days before it happens, and there are 30 seats.
- Heritage Open Days asks visitors to check entries for last minute changes before setting out. Volunteer-run openings can move.
- Cheam and Carshalton Beeches stations are both a few minutes from these venues. Fares and times are on our Sutton trains page. If you drive, tariffs and permit zones are on our parking page.
- Beddington Farmlands is running four free guided walks on the same weekend, three of them on 12 September. More to do across the borough is on our things to do in Sutton page.
Have your say