Herne Hill

London - Pax Britannica -VAL- London Borough of Southwark

Herne Hill /hɜːrn/ is a district in South London, England, approximately four miles from Charing Cross and bordered by Brixton, Denmark Hill, Dulwich Village, Loughborough Junction and Tulse Hill. It overlaps the boundary between the boroughs of Lambeth and Southwark. There is a road of the same name in the area (which is part of the A215 and was formerly called Herne Hill Road), as well as a railway station.

History

In Rocque's 1746 map, the area is shown as "Island Green", probably reflecting the presence of the River Effra and smaller tributaries. Early references to the area also use the form "Ireland Green". The earliest documented reference to "Herne Hill" is in two fire insurance policies issued by the Sun Insurance Company in 1792 (where the spelling is "Hearns" and "Herns" Hill) A map showing the Herne Hill ward of Lambeth Metropolitan Borough as it appeared in 1916.
The area now known as Herne Hill was part of the Manor of Milkwell, which existed from at least 1291, and was a mixture of farms and woodland until the late 18th century.[4] It was divided between the ancient parishes of Camberwell and Lambeth. In 1783, Samuel Sanders (a timber merchant) bought the land now occupied by Denmark Hill and Herne Hill from the Manor; he then began granting leases for large plots of land to wealthy families. By the mid-19th century, the road from the modern Herne Hill Junction to Denmark Hill was lined with large residential estates and the area had become a prosperous suburb for the merchant class. (John Ruskin grew up, from the age of 4, in a house on Herne Hill).

Herne Hill was transformed by the arrival of the London, Chatham & Dover Railway in 1862. Cheap and convenient access to London Victoria, the City of London, Kent and south-west London created demand for middle-class housing; the terraced streets that now characterise the area were constructed in the decades after the opening of Herne Hill station and the old estates were entirely built over. A letter reporting a Herne Hill sighting of Victorian folklore demon Spring-heeled Jack, "that malapropre fellow of the ghost", was published in the Camberwell and Peckham Times on 9 November 1872. The incident was recorded as taking place where the footpath on Herne Hill ran past St.Paul's Church into Half Moon Lane.

The Half Moon is a Grade II* listed public house in Half Moon Lane.

Herne Hill Railway Station

Herne Hill railway station sits at the bottom of the hill that gives the area its name and is close to Brockwell Park. The section of Railton Road outside the station is mixed usage for pedestrians and vehicles.
The Chatham Main Line and Sutton Loop railway lines through Herne Hill are elevated above road level on a brick viaduct that runs north–south. The station's 1862 Gothic, polychrome brick building is on the western side of the viaduct, with access the station also from the east via a foot tunnel from Milkwood Road. The building houses a ticket office and newsagent, and was Grade II listed in 1998: the listing notes the station's arched doorways, Welsh slate roof and decorative brickwork. It was described by Cherry and Pevsner as a "handsome group" and featured on the cover of a book about London's railway architecture. The station entrance canopy (which had been shortened and altered in the mid 20th century) was removed in 2015 due to its disrepair and a new one installed in July 2016 with a new timber valance design and cornice based on the original Victorian one.
The four tracks are served by two island platforms; northbound trains call at the western platform and southbound trains the eastern platform, providing cross-platform interchange between the two routes.
There are flat junctions at each end of the station: Herne Hill North Junction, where the lines to Loughborough Junction and Brixton diverge; and Herne Hill South Junction, where the lines to West Dulwich and Tulse Hill diverge. Thameslink and Southeastern services cross each other's paths at the junctions, constraining capacity on both routes. The station also has a turnback siding on its eastern side, adjacent to Milkwood Road.

History

The area now known as Herne Hill had been a rural part of the Manor of Milkwell since the 13th century. Two tributaries of the River Effra met at the undeveloped site of the future station; it was known as Island Green until the 18th century.
In 1783 a timber merchant, Samuel Sanders, bought Herne Hill from the Manor. Sanders granted leases for large plots of land to wealthy families – John Ruskin spent his childhood at an estate on Herne Hill. The Effra was covered over in the 1820s; and the area had become an upper-class suburb by the mid-19th century (a contemporary author referred to the hill as "the Elysium" for merchants). The opening of the railway station, which provided convenient and cheap access to central London, started the urbanisation of Herne Hill. All of the large estates were eventually cleared to make way for many smaller houses. An 1870 railway travel guide noted the population of Herne Hill was 701;the contemporaneous development of new residential streets would increase the population by 3,000.

Construction

A railway line through Herne Hill was proposed in 1852 by the Mid Kent and London and South Western Junction Railways Company. No construction work was undertaken at that time and the company had ceased to exist by 1860. In the late 1850s, the East Kent Railway had ambitions to run passenger trains between Kent and London, but it did not own any railway lines in inner London. It reached an agreement with the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway (LB&SCR) in 1858 to use its West End and Crystal Palace line to access Battersea and (from 1860) Victoria. This arrangement incurred costly access fees, but it was necessary until the company obtained Parliamentary authority to build in London.
On 6 August 1860, the Metropolitan Extensions Act granted the London, Chatham and Dover Railway (LCDR; the successor to the East Kent company) the powers to build three inner London lines: Beckenham Junction to Herne Hill (4 miles 21 chains or 6.9 kilometres); Herne Hill to Farringdon (4 mi 32 chains or 7.1 km); and Herne Hill to Battersea to connect with the lines into Victoria (2 mi 65 chains or 4.5 km). The route from Beckenham Junction to Battersea closely resembled that of the 1852 proposal, going via Clapham, Brixton, Herne Hill, Dulwich and Sydenham.

Herne Hill station and the first section to be completed, from Victoria to Herne Hill via Stewarts Lane and Brixton, opened on 25 August 1862. The station was designed by architect John Taylor and railway engineers Joseph Cubitt and J.T. Turner. The building was intended to impress: it had tea rooms offering buffets, decorative brickwork and a tower (which also served the practical function of concealing the water tank for steam locomotives). The Building News described the station in 1863 as "spacious and convenient ... and of the very best quality". It also stated that "an unusual amount of decorative taste has been displayed" in the station's construction; even the viaduct was praised as "one of the most ornamental pieces of work we have ever seen attempted on a railway" for its fine brickwork. The station's design prompted the journal to write a 2,000-word editorial bemoaning the comparatively poor architectural quality of other contemporary civil engineering projects. An architectural critic later noted the station was "eulogised" by journals upon its opening and that its architecture was still seen as exemplary at the end of the 19th century.
There were initially two platforms, up and down. The up platform was accessed from the upper floor of the station building via a stairway outside the building. The station's original signal box, elevated above the railway viaduct at the junction between Norwood Road and Half Moon Lane, was a prominent feature in Herne Hill for many years.
The land for the station was compulsorily purchased from the estate of Thomas Vyse (died 1861[38]), manufacturer of straw hats and owner of the Abbey, an estate at 70 Herne Hill; the station and much of the viaduct were built on part of the Abbey's grounds. A new road (Station Road) was built from the junction of Norwood Road and Half Moon Lane, Herne Hill's main thoroughfare, to the station.[40] The line from Beckenham Junction reached Herne Hill from the south in July 1863, connecting the station to the LCDR's lines in Kent, and finally allowing the LCDR to avoid using the LB&SCR's tracks to access Victoria from Kent. On 6 October 1863, the City Branch opened from Herne Hill as far as Elephant & Castle, via Camberwell and Walworth Road.

In 1868, the LB&SCR opened a suburban line from London Bridge to Sutton via Tulse Hill. A 1 mi (1.6 km) connecting line from Tulse Hill to Herne Hill opened on 1 January 1869.

Early services

From July 1863, LCDR trains between Victoria and Kent ran through Herne Hill, and to continental Europe via a connecting steamboat from Dover Harbour to Calais;[44] these boat trains left Victoria and Ludgate Hill simultaneously and were joined at Herne Hill.[45] Express journeys from Herne Hill to Dover, a distance of 74 mi (119.1 km), took 1 hour 36 minutes, at an average speed of 46.25 mph (74.4 km/h).[46] Services to London were split at Herne Hill to give passengers easier access to the City of London and beyond;[47] the LCDR began operating direct services to King's Cross and Barnet (now High Barnet Underground station) from Herne Hill when Snow Hill tunnel opened. A popular workmen's train (one penny per journey) ran between Ludgate Hill and Victoria via Herne Hill from 1865. Trains left from both termini at 04:55 and returned at 18:15. The LCDR was compelled to operate this service by Parliament to compensate for the large number of working-class homes destroyed in Camberwell during the construction of the City Branch. Regular one-way fares to Ludgate Hill were eightpence, sixpence and fourpence for first, second and third class respectively (or return for one shilling, ninepence and sevenpence respectively), with journey times of 15 minutes on express trains and 26 minutes when calling at all stops.

Both the Great Northern Railway (GNR) and the London and South Western Railway (LSWR) helped fund the Metropolitan Extensions (£320,000 and £310,000 respectively; £30,280,000 and £29,330,000 in 2019) in return for the right to use the LCDR's tracks. The GNR ran trains between Hatfield and Herne Hill from August 1866 until March 1868 (when the trains were diverted to Victoria via Loughborough Junction);[48] this was a busy all-stops service, with 15 trains leaving Hatfield and 14 leaving Herne Hill every day. The LSWR began running trains between Ludgate Hill and Wimbledon via Herne Hill when the Tulse Hill extension was completed.[53] Some of these services went as far as Kingston until the mid-1890s.

Changes from 1870 to 1923

By 1870, a track had been added to the east of the station and two sidings had been added to the west; one of the western sidings was a bay platform for passenger trains, which was accessed from the platform adjoining the upper floor. Interlocking signalling was in use at Herne Hill by 1880. The LCDR enlarged the station in 1884 to meet growing demand: the viaduct was widened to allow for the construction of a second island platform and two lines to the east (the easternmost line was used only for freight); and the foot tunnel under the viaduct was opened. In 1885, the LCDR decided to use Blackfriars Bridge railway station solely as a goods yard but lacked the space to sort wagons at the site. It purchased 14 acres (5.7 ha) of land between Herne Hill and Loughborough Junction for this purpose.[63] The Herne Hill Sorting Sidings had some 35 sidings, the longest of which was 940 ft (286.5 m). A Stationmaster's House was built at 239 Railton Road in the mid-1880s as the site offered a good view of the station (it is now privately owned). In 1888, Railton Road was extended to the Norwood Road/Half Moon Lane junction and Station Road ceased to exist.

An 1894 Ordnance Survey map showing the station's layout
At the beginning of 1899, the LCDR and the neighbouring South Eastern Railway (SER) combined their operations as the South Eastern and Chatham Railway (SECR), jointly owned by the two railways. The SECR ran the trains, but the lines and stations continued to be owned by the LCDR or SER. A late-night service from Ludgate Hill (departing 01:15) to Beckenham Junction via Herne Hill began in 1910. The intention was to satisfy journalists on Fleet Street who regularly complained in print about the poor quality of service on the line; those working on the morning papers often worked beyond midnight and missed the last train