The Sparrow Grass Ball – 2026/04/25

Before Battersea was densely built in the Victorian period, much of the land around Lavender Hill, Battersea Rise, and Wandsworth Common was famous for its market gardens. For more than two centuries these fertile plots supplied fruit, flowers, herbs, and vegetables to London—most famously lavender for the perfume trade, but also plums, cherries, and asparagus, which local growers sold into Covent Garden. In this district the gardeners used the old London and Surrey dialect term “sparrow-grass” for asparagus, a pronunciation recorded from the 17th to 19th centuries in market slang and gardeners’ speech. This agricultural landscape only gave way to suburban development in the mid- to late-19th century, but the names Lavender Hill, Clapham Junction, and the Falconbrook area still reflect the earlier countryside of nurseries, orchards, and market plots that once defined Battersea.

You are cordially invited to the Sparrow Grass Ball, an adults only evening of elegance and delight.

Saturday 25th April 2026 from 6pm – 11pm at St. Peter’s Church, 23 Plough Road SW11 2DE

3 Course sit-down Dinner, Dancing, Photobooth and Raffle…