Rotary Fields

Rotary Field was given to the people of Purley by the Purley Rotary Club in 1925. In the first half of the C19th the ground was part of the route of the 'World's First Railway Line', the Surrey Iron Railway laid down in 1803. It operated in much the same way as the canals, with people paying tolls to take their own horse-drawn wagons along the iron rails. The line was abandoned in 1846 but parts of the trackbed and section of track can be seen in the park. A drinking fountain commemorating Queen Victoria was erected in 1901, later resited to the library gardens by Banstead Road.