A connection to the past would be severed if the Carshalton lavender field is bulldozed by developers, supporters of the community project have said.

Lavender was chosen for the site at Stanley Park Allotments because the group behind the scheme - BioRegional - wanted to regenerate a local industry.

If it was lost, supporters say, not only would the community be robbed of a successful environmental project but it would be the end of a piece of living heritage.

Roger Webb, a member of Carshalton Lavender - the voluntary group who run the field, said: "If you like, setting up the field was a quickly compressed learning practice that we went through and it must have been pretty much the same for people who did it first time around more than 100 years ago. We felt a connection to the people who'd done it before.

"If it went, it would be the end of a chapter of my life that's been immensely satisfying and immensely rewarding. It would be terrible to have it taken away."

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there were lavender fields all around the site of the existing field and distilleries for processing oil were situated along the Wandle river.

As the London suburbs spread south, the fields were replaced with homes while imports from overseas undermined the domestic industry.

The new Carshalton lavender field was planted in 1996 and is harvested every July - first manually by local residents and then by machine.

The Stanley Park allotment site, which includes the lavender field, is one of three possible locations for the new Stanley Park High School.

Councillors will decide where to build the school on April 16.