Iron way

An archaeological expedition on Sunday: well, industrial archaeology, anyway, which I always found more engaging, somehow, than the prehistoric stuff.


With some trepidation I set out for the wilder reaches of Sarf London: Mitcham, in fact, in the London Borough of Merton. For there rests an innocuous-looking office block called "Station Court". And the clue is in the name.


For this is no ordinary Georgian pile: it is, in fact, the world's oldest surviving railway station (not counting the Elizabethan era Red Hall at Bourne in Lincolnshire, of course. Though, obviously, that wasn't purpose-built. Obviously).


No, Station Court in Mitcham is one of the few surviving structures of the Surrey Iron Railway. Permission to build this was granted in 1801, at the height of the English terrors that Napoleon would shortly invade. Nelson had not yet destroyed the French (and Spanish) fleet, and it would be another decade and a half before Wellington finally crushed Boney on the battlefield in what was a damn close-run thing.


So, the Frenchy fleet was a constant threat to trade up the English Channel from Africa and across the Atlantic into London: and, as we all know (the present ash cloud just being the latest example) we're not happy when we get cut off.

A cunning plan was therefore devised to construct a horse-drawn railway from the harbour at Portsmouth all the way to London, enabling ships to offload before reaching the treacherous Channel, and their goods to be shipped overland.


The railway was essentially a track with "L" shaped iron girders running parallel to the road: standard-width horse-drawn carts simply fitted on the flat part of the rails, the wheels guided by the upright flanges: a horse could pull a much heavier load than would be possibly over your bog-standard boggy track, usually managing 5 wagons to the solitary one that could normally be pulled.


The northern part of the Surrey Iron Railway was built before the French threat was contained, and it hugged the banks of the River Wandle:


At the time that was a heavily industrialised area -- here a local mill-race still has a water-wheel, albeit without paddles:


Today you can find that and other remnants of this early industrialisation at the lovely Morden Hall park, a National Trust oasis of preserved mills and wetlands in this otherwise pretty unprepossessing part of London:


I feel quite smug about that photo. But I figure if you take enough of them, one or two will turn out alright.

Anyway, back to the delightful station at Mitcham:


It follows the fairly standard design for English stagecoach inns, the closest architectural form then existing to the functions of the railway station.


Here you can see it perched on the top of the embankment above the railway cutting:


And the route of the Surrey Iron Railway is today part of the London Tramlink -- trams follow the same route as the horse-drawn wagons of more than two centuries earlier.


You'll be pleased to hear I've almost satiated myself with the Tramlink.

For now, anyway.