RAILWAY
STATIONS
See Also: ARCHES;
HOTELS; DEVELOPMENTS; INNS & TAVERNS; MEAT Smithfield Market; RAILWAYS;
ROADS New Road and City Road; TRANSPORT; UNDERGROUND LINES The Metropolitan
Line; UNDERGROUND
STATIONS
A by-law
prohibited the building of railway stations in the centre of London, therefore,
they were strung out along its periphery - from the Great Western s station in
Paddington to the Great Eastern s at Liverpool Street. The development of the Underground system was
stimulated into being by the arrival of the railways in London. The Metropolitan underground line, which
opened in 1863, was promoted as a means by which moving between the termini
and into the City of London might be eased for travellers.
Some of the
principal stations that serve South London and the counties beyond it are
located to the north of the Thames. Of
these, Cannon Street, Charing Cross, and Victoria were each in succession the
hub of London s continental rail traffic.
Many of the
stations were erected on plots that had long been in unitary ownership: Charing
Cross was built upon what had been Hungerford Market, Victoria Station upon the
site of the former Chelsea Waterworks, Fenchurch devoured most of the open part
of America Square, and Liverpool Street was built upon what had been the site
Bedlam.
Sometimes
whole districts were demolished in order that a station-sized space could be
created. St Pancras s construction
devoured a slum called Agar Town; Euston and King s Cross s did likewise. Some of those who were made homeless by the
development of Marylebone Railway Station were rehoused in the accommodation
provided by the Wharncliffe Dwellings Company, a business that was linked to
the Great Central Railway Company.1
1. The 1st
Earl Wharncliffe was chairman of the railway company.
Blackfriars Railway Station
On
Blackfriars Railway Station's (1864) 1886 façade there was a stone panel
that declared the destinations that could be reached from the terminus. These juxtaposed some of the great cities of
Europe with modest commuter towns of the south-eastern corner of England. The pairings included: Baden Baden and
Beckenham, Berlin and Bickley, Geneva and Margate, Marseilles, and
Sittingbourne, St Petersburg and Westgate-on-Sea, and Vienna and
Sheerness. In the late 1970s the station
was rebuilt. This prompted a public
outcry. As a sop, the panel was remounted
upstairs by the entrance to the platforms.
Location:
179 Queen Victoria Street, EC4V 4DY (orange, turquoise)
Charing Cross Railway Station
Charing Cross
Station (1864) was built upon the site of the former Hungerford Market.
The present
Charing Cross Station building and its accompanying office building, Embankment
Place (1990), were designed by Sir Terry Farrell.1
Location:
Strand, WC2N 5HS (yellow, pink)
See Also:
FLAGS The Red Flag; M.I.6; STREET MARKETS, DISAPPEARED
Website:
www.networkrail.co.uk/communities/passengers/our-stations/london-charing-cross
1. Other
buildings by Farrell include the overseas intelligence service M.I.6 s Vauxhall
Cross headquarters, and the MTV Building (n e the TV-am Building) (1983)
in Camden Lock.
The
Playhouse Theatre
For much of
the 19thC the Strand was London s principal theatrical street. The Avenue Theatre (1882) was unusually sited
away from the road. It would seem that
the true purpose of impresario Sefton Parry in developing the building was not
to have another venue for drama. Rather,
he seems to have been seeking to wrest a handsome profit on the project by
charging the South Eastern Railway Company, the owners of the neighbouring
Charing Cross Railway Station, an extortionate amount to buy the property from
him. This would be so that the Company
could increase the number of tracks that it could run into its terminus. However, the enterprise was disinclined to do
so. Instead, it had its engineers create
a platform above the theatre upon which the tracks were lain.
In 1905 an
arch that spanned the station collapsed down onto the tracks, which, in their
turn, demolished the theatre. Six people
were killed. Rather than buy the
building the railway proprietors commissioned a second more engineered
platform. In the years that had passed
since the theatre s original construction the venue had proven to be a
commercial success. Therefore, its
owners used their compensation payment to construct the venue that now stands
upon the site. It was renamed The
Playhouse Theatre.
Location:
The Playhouse Theatre, Northumberland Avenue, WC2N 5DE (orange, grey)
See Also:
WEST END THEATRES
Clapham Junction Railway Station
Clapham
Junction Railway Station (1863) is the world s busiest railway facility. This is because it handles traffic from both
Waterloo and Victoria. Many of the
trains that pass through it do not stop there, while many of the travellers who
alight at the station do so just in order to change trains.
Location:
St John s Hill, SW11 1TN
Website:
https://tfl.gov.uk/overground/stop/910GCLPHMJ1/clapham-junction-rail-station
Closed Stations
Primrose
Hill Railway Station
Primrose Hill
Railway Station (1855) received trains from Broad Street Station. It closed 1992. The station is intact but overgrown.
Location:
Regent Park Road, c.NW1 8BE
Eurostar
(Originally,
Cannon Street was the hub of the continental rail traffic. After the formation of the Southern Railway
in 1923 the traffic was shifted first to Charing Cross and then to Victoria.)
In 1994 the
initial Eurostar service started running from Waterloo Railway Station. The structure that housed it was designed by
Nicholas Grimshaw. He used
regularly-sized panes of glass in order to keep costs low. He and the engineers with whom worked came to
appreciate that using sliding pins and adjustable brackets they could make
these overlap in a more attractive way than they had initially envisaged. The team drew much of their inspiration from
how pangolin scales overlap.
Thirteen
years later the service transferred to St Pancras. The facility was converted for use by
domestic services.
Webstar:
https://www.eurostar.com
Euston Railway Station
Euston
Railway Station (1837) was built to service London to Birmingham railway
traffic. The construction of the
112-mile-long track was the largest single civil engineering project since the
construction of the Great Wall of China.
Initially, steam trains that sought to leave the terminus needed to be
assisted by a cable because of the incline.
This was because of the steepness of the tracks that led into the
station.
During the
1960s and 1970s Euston was redeveloped.1 At the time, airports were perceived of as
being a desirable role model. Therefore,
the station s layout was redesigned so that travellers did not see the trains
upon which they were going to travel until they were right by them.
Location:
Euston Railway Station, Euston Road, NW1 2RT (red, brown)
See Also:
HERITAGE Lost London, The Euston Arch
Website:
www.networkrail.co.uk/communities/passengers/our-stations/london-euston
1. In taxi slang the new
building came to be referred to as The Box of Tricks .
Fenchurch Street Railway Station
Fenchurch
Street Railway Station (1841) was opened by the London & Blackwall
Railway. It was the first railway
station in the City of London.
Location:
Fenchurch Place, EC3M 4AJ (blue, red)
Website:
https://tfl.gov.uk/bus/stop/490001108E/fenchurch-street-station
Station
Bookstalls
In 1841
London & Blackwall Railway granted William Marshall a concession to open a
bookstall within the station. This was
the first ever railway station bookstall and thus the progenitor of airport
bookstores.
See Also:
BOOKSHOPS
King s Cross Railway Station
King s Cross
Railway Station (1852) was built for the Great Northern Railways on what had
until a few years before been the site of a smallpox hospital. The architect was Lewis Cubbitt.
In 1972 the
front of King s Cross station had a modern extension. Its planning permission was as a temporary
structure. It was there for decades.
In 2007 it
was announced that King s Cross was going to undergo a major
refurbishment. The proposed changes
included removing the station s modern front.
Three years later the front was still very much in place.
Location:
King s Cross Railway Station, Euston Road, N1 9AL (red, blue)
See Also:
FOLK TRADITIONS Legends, Battlebridge; ILLUSTRATION & GRAPHIC DESIGN John
Hassall
Website:
www.networkrail.co.uk/communities/passengers/our-stations/london-kings-cross
Harry
Potter
The makers of
the Harry Potter movies regarded King s Cross as being too ugly and so
used St Pancras instead.
Spend,
Spend, Spend!
Viv Nicholson
(1936-2015) and her husband Keith (d.1965) were natives of Castleford in West
Yorkshire. In 1961 they won £152,319 on
the Littlewoods football pools. A couple
of days later the couple travelled to London to pick up their winnings. At King s Cross Station they were asked what
they planned to do with the money. Mrs
Nicholson declared Spend, spend, spend!
And they did lavishly. When Mr
Nicholson died in a car accident four years later, only £42,000 was left. His widow soon disposed of this. (Their children s private education had been
safeguarded by a trust that was set up shortly after the win.)
Mrs
Nicholson s life became the subject of a notable television play that was
written by Jack Rosenthal (1931-2004). A
musical followed.
Liverpool Street Railway Station
Liverpool
Street Railway Station (1874) was developed by the Great Eastern Railway. Previously, the site had been occupied by
Bedlam and the Water-Carriers Hall.
Location:
Liverpool Street, EC2M 7PY (red, pink)
Website:
www.networkrail.co.uk/communities/passengers/our-stations/london-liverpool-street
London Bridge Railway Station
London Bridge
Railway Station (1837) was the first railway terminus to be built in
London. The London-Greenwich railway was
built along a four-mile viaduct that was constructed on top of 878 brick-built
arches. The first section of the track
opened in 1836 and ran between Deptford and Spa Road in Bermondsey. Much of its initial traffic came from
Londoners who were curious to experience the novelty of railway travel.
Initially,
London Bridge Railway Station was a fairly ramshackle affair. Serious investment in the facility s
construction only occurred once it looked as though the railway line was going
to be a success. The station s
development necessitated the expulsion of St Thomas s Hospital from its
original site.1
In 1844 the
first regular long-distance commuter service started. It ran between London Bridge and Brighton.
Location:
Station Approach Road, SE1 9SP
See Also: HOSPITALS The Old Operating Theatre
Website:
www.networkrail.co.uk/communities/passengers/our-stations/london-bridge
1. The
hospital did not find a permanent home until the development of the Albert
Embankment (1871).
Marylebone Railway Station
In the 1880s
it was proposed that the unbuilt Marylebone Railway Station should be the
terminus for the Channel Tunnel.
The Great
Central Railway-owned facility (1899) was the last of the London termini to be
constructed. Its relative modesty
derives from the fact that its final section ran through St John Wood s. The suburb s residents mounted a stout and
protracted defence against the incursion.
As a result, by the time that the station came to be built, its parent s
financial resources had become more depleted than they would have been
otherwise.
Location:
Melcombe Place, NW1 6JJ (blue, purple)
Website:
https://tfl.gov.uknational-rail/stop/910GMARYLBN/london-marylebone-rail-station
Paddington Railway Station
The original
destination for which trains departed from Paddington Railway Station (1838)
was West Drayton.
In 1851
Isambard Kingdom Brunel was given the commission to design the present
terminus. His glazed creation owed a
large debt to Joseph Paxton s Crystal Palace, which had hosted the Great
Exhibition the same year. The
Brunel-designed structure was completed in 1854.
Location:
Praed Street, W2 1HB (red, blue)
See Also:
TUNNELS The Wapping Tunnel
Website:
www.networkrail.co.uk/communities/passengers/our-stations/london-paddington
Fox &
Henderson s
As a young
man, Charles Fox worked as an assistant to the railway engineer Robert
Stephenson. In 1839 Fox and Francis
Bramah set up an engineering business - Bramah, Fox & Company. John Henderson joined the firm. In 1845 it was renamed Fox, Henderson &
Company. Fox led the design side of the
enterprise, while Henderson oversaw its manufacturing aspect. They specialised in railway related items and
structural works. During the 1840s the
firm was involved in the construction of railway station roofs. The firm was central to the realisation of
Brunel s plan for Paddington Station.
Early on in
the design of the Crystal Palace, Paxton called upon the services of Fox,
Henderson & Company. The business
manufactured many of the components that were used to build the structure and
carried out the construction itself.
Following the end of the Great Exhibition of 1851, Fox, Henderson &
Company dismantled the Palace and then reassembled it at Sydenham in south
London.
See Also:
EXHIBITIONS The Great Exhibition of 1851; VISITOR ATTRACTIONS, DISAPPEARED The
Crystal Palace
St Pancras Railway Station
The Midland
Railway was one of the last railway operators to build its London
terminus. Initially, it had used the
Great Northern Railway s King s Cross facility to run its services into the
metropolis. To mark its arrival in
style, the company commissioned William Barlow1 to design its
station and Sir George Gilbert Scott the accompanying hotel.
In 1870 St
Pancras opened. At the time, it was the
largest enclosed space that had ever been constructed. The station is a storey above Euston Road
because its tracks go over the Regent s Canal, whereas those of King s Cross go
underneath the waterway.
St Pancras
almost fell victim to the same modernisation programme that saw the demise of
the old Euston. However, a campaign to
preserve it was led by the poet and architectural writer Sir John Betjeman. This proved to be successful.
In 2007 the
St Pancras Eurostar service started. The
station received the first new railway line into London to have been built in
over a century. It was the terminus of
High Speed 1,2 a 70-mile-long track.
This included the six-mile-long London Tunnel that ran from the station
to Stratford; one engineer described the subterranean engineering situation
that had had to be addressed to build the structure as spaghetti . The track had been constructed to
International Union of Railways B gauge specification. This meant that German ICE and French TGV
trains could run along it.
Location:
Euston Road, N1C 4QP (blue, turquoise)
See Also:
HOTELS The Midland Grand
Website:
www.networkrail.co.uk/communities/passengers/our-stations/london-st-pancras-international https://stpancras.com
1. Barlow was assisted by the
engineer R.M. Ordish, who had designed the Albert Bridge (1873) in
Chelsea. (The future novelist Thomas
Hardy, then an architect, cleared the graveyard of Old St Pancras Church.)
2. Formerly, the Channel
Tunnel Rail Link.
Vauxhall Railway Station
In Russian a
'vokzal' is a 'railway terminus'. This
derives from the 18thC fame of the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens. Similar establishments across Europe were
named in its honour; the Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen were originally known as
the Tivoli & Vauxhall. A Vauxhall
Pavilion was opened at Pavlovsk near St Petersburg. With the advent of steam trains, local
businessmen concluded that it would provide an excellent destination for a
service that would run from the city.
Thus, 'vauxhall' acquired its Russian usage.
Location:
Vauxhall Cross, SW8 1SS
See Also:
PLEASURE GARDENS Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, European Vauxhalls
Website:
https://tfl.gov.uk/national-rail/stop/910GVAUXHLM/vauxhall-rail-station
Victoria Railway Station
The Grosvenor
Bridge (1860) was the first railway bridge to span the Thames. It was erected to provide access to the two
competing termini that were built upon the site that is now occupied by
Victoria Railway Station. The
north-western part (1860) of the present-day facility was built for the London,
Brighton & South Coast Railway, which served Sussex. The south-eastern portion (1862) was
constructed for the London Chatham & Dover Railway, which drew its custom
from Kent and that county s ports. If a customer
of one operator wished to use the other s services, s/he had to walk out into
Terminus Place and then walk into the other station.
In part, the
Overend Gurney scandal may account for the deep wariness that the managements
of the London Brighton & South Coast Railway and the London Chatham &
Dover Railway had of one another. In
1899 the two businesses came under the same ownership, however, the wall
between their respective stations remained standing. The First World War exposed the logistical
problems that were generated by the existence of over a hundred separate rail
companies. Subsequently, the government
reorganised the industry. The Railways
Act of 1921 - in what was a de facto nationalisation - amalgamated the
existing operators to create four regional companies. One of these was Southern Railway, which
acquired both halves of Victoria Station.
In 1924, over three years after the new ownership structure had come
into being - and a quarter of a century since two enterprises had become sister
companies - the wall finally came down.
After the
formation of the Southern, the continental rail traffic was shifted first to
Charing Cross and then to Victoria. With
the growth of international air traffic, the station retained its importance,
becoming the principal rail link between London and Gatwick Airport.
Location:
Victoria Street, SW1E 5ND1 (orange, blue)
See Also:
THE
GREAT RAILWAY CRASH OF 1866; HORSES
The Blue Cross Hospital Victoria; RAILWAYS Industrial Policy; WATER SUPPLY The
Chelsea Waterworks
Website:
www.networkrail.co.uk/communities/passengers/our-stations/london-victoria
1. In taxi slang the side
entrance into Victoria Station from Wilton Road is known as The Hole In The
Wall .
Pre-Aviation
Gatwick
The archway
between the Platforms 9-19 section of Victoria Station and Terminus Place. On its eastern side is an old map of the
railway s system. On it, Gatwick is not
yet London s second airport being overshadowed by its neighbours Horley and
Three Bridges and is noted as a destination for golf and horse riding.
Waterloo Railway Station
The London
& South Western Railway s Waterloo Station (1848) derived its name from the
nearby Waterloo Bridge.
Location:
Waterloo Road, SE1 8SE
Website:
www.networkrail.co.uk/communities/passengers/our-stations/london-waterloo
Necropolis
The
Necropolis at Woking was developed by the National Necropolis & Mausoleum
Company to utilise the London-to-Southampton railway line to take some of
London s dead for burial away from the city.
A special terminus, the Necropolis Station (1854), was built adjacent to
Waterloo Station. At Brookwood there was
a branch line that ran into the cemetery.
The service ended following aerial bomb damage during the Second World
War.
Location:
121 Westminster Bridge Road, SE1 7HR
See Also:
BELIEF GROUPS & CULTS Druids, Cremations; CEMETERIES; GARDENS Garden
Writing, John Claudius Loudoun; GRAVEYARDS
David
Backhouse 2024