It's exactly 100 years ago today since the Northern line was connected at Kennington and extended to Morden.
Nobody was blogging at the time but imagine if I was.
Monday, 13 September, 1926
What a day it's been on the Underground Electric Railways! Two years ago the City & South London and the Charing Cross, Euston & Hampstead linked their railways at Camden Town. Today they have linked them again but on the other side of the river at Kennington. Not only are the two railways now fully connected but they've also been extended five miles south from Clapham Common to Morden, with the hope of further to come. The new Morden–Edgware line, as it's called, is the Underground's deepest penetration into south London and I have no doubt that before long it will surely be rebranded as the Southern line.
I have of course been out on a first day journey to experience this massive subterranean expansion, riding all the way from Charing Cross to Morden. I did this mostly by tube but partly by tram, because you have to come up to the surface sometimes if you want to see all the new stuff. I also took one photograph at each point of interest with my Vest Pocket Kodak, which inexplicably appear to have been developed in colour. [7 photos]
Charing Cross on the District Railway has long been the southern terminus of the Charing Cross, Euston & Hampstead Railway. Well no more because it's been extended under the Thames and you can now continue to Waterloo and beyond! The loop of track has been sealed off and partly filled with rubble, then a new southbound tunnel driven beneath the river and it's amazing, you truly can't see the join. As yet it feels wholly unfamiliar seeing trains going 'the wrong way', not towards Edgware or Highgate but to strange destinations like Clapham and Morden. But what a complicated station this has now become! We already have District and Circle and Bakerloo lines and now also through trains on the C&SLR, plus of course SR trains steaming out upstairs. Personally I would rename this station Embankment and then rebrand Strand as Charing Cross and maybe merge it with Trafalgar Square, but I doubt anyone will act fast on my excellent idea.
In exciting news Waterloo now has a Morden-Edgware platform as well as a Bakerloo platform, so double the opportunity for Surrey commuters to change to the tube. It still amazes me when I see the lights on the front of a train emerging from a tunnel underneath Britain's greatest river. But this is nothing compared to the ridiculous kerfuffle that's been installed down the line at Kennington while the station's been closed for three years. The new tunnels from Waterloo sweep in so they arrive parallel to the existing platforms, then connect in a huge loop that allows trains to turn round. You must not ride the loop, they chuck you off, perhaps there are ghosts round there or something.
The next section of the line has obviously been here since 1900 thus is old hat, so I climbed the 79 steps up to street level and took the tram instead. Off we went down the Clapham Road past many taverns and a pickle factory, also stations at Oval, Stockwell and Clapham North, also the Temperance Billiard Hall (Moderate Charges). At one point the tram driver stopped for three minutes to even out the gaps in the service, something which would never happen on the trains below. Eventually we arrived at Clapham Common with its trademark dome which had been the end of the line for over 25 years but no more! It seems amazing that this narrow crowded platform is now just another stopping point rather than full-on buffered.
The first station on the extension is Clapham South, although they nearly called it Nightingale Lane because that's where it is. Wow it looks so different to what we've all been used to. The tiles are gorgeous, all shimmering emerald around the roundels, also that's a lot of electrical cupboards at the bottom of the escalator, also the uplighters dazzle, also the octagonal skylights are proper unusual, also the electrical chandelier at the entrance to the ticket hall is quite something. This new Charles Holden guy they've got designing the stations sure knows how to make an architectural statement!
Sadly the next station at Balham isn't yet ready. This is absolutely typical of the Underground Electric Railways Company of London, yet another project mis-delivered with shoddy construction and poor planning. I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't open until December, and in the meantime trains will whizz straight through to Trinity Road (Tooting Bec). It's not a catchy name and I bet they shorten it. The platform here has a gentle curve, also that's some gusty wind blowing newspapers down the escalators, also I like the way there are two stark buildings at street level facing different sides of the main crossroads. Is it too early to describe Holden's designs as Modernist?
Tooting Broadway station is a curved stone battlement with strip windows and three very strategically placed roundels. It dominates the crossroads at the top of Mitcham Road, a presence which might be diminished if anyone ever shifted the new statue of Edward VII off the traffic island and plonked it in front. A stunning new intervention is the decorative four-way lampstand opposite, not truly for illuminatory and directional purposes but in fact a ventilation column required for the station below. The gold-rimmed clocks on the platforms are a similar treat, almost a Victorian touch in a station that feels anything but.
By Colliers Wood the similarity of these new stations is plainly evident, always Portland stone frontage, always bold uplighters on the escalators and always emerald tiles on the platforms. And yet each has an inner individuality, here embodied in exterior folds, a tripartite clerestory and saturnine capitals. It seems almost natural to see a stream of gentlemen in bowler hats flock towards the ticket collector, their cigarette smoke swirling up towards the octagonal skylights, before pouring onwards down into the depths. So deftly has Charles Holden weaved his magic that he could even replace Admiral Lord Nelson as the local hero hereabouts, at least sufficiently to see The Victory pub renamed after him.
There have been many debates about the name of the next station, with the somewhat-vague South Wimbledon eventually ousting the much more sensible Merton Grove. There already are plans to add the word 'Merton' to the roundels, although I think they already look appealingly chunky with South Wimbledon spread across two lines. The News Counter in the ticket hall hedges its bets by advertising both the Wimbledon News at one end of its fascia and the Merton & Morden News at the other. If you like twiddly arrows check out the finial flourish on the Way Out signs, also the quadruple fletchings in the cross passage.
Just before Morden the incredibly long tunnel - potentially record breaking - finally breaks out into a lengthy cutting. It's possible local NIMBYs will demand the last quarter mile be covered by a linear park to limit suburban disruption, but come on guys, these electric trains are neither noisy nor do they belch steam. The end of the line is marked by a sprawl of open-air platforms and stairs to street level through one last glorious Holdenesque gateway. Push through the wooden doors and you emerge into as yet nothing much, but imagine the potential. Even the station entrance has space behind it to build some pig-ugly office block should the need arise.
This new terminus has announced its intention to become a suburban bridgehead with a significant bus service departing from outside, also a car park for those commuters who prefer to leave their Morris Oxfords here. Imagine the streets and avenues that might spread across the fields of Surrey now that London's underground railway has pierced its rustic rim. Imagine the ease with which you could now live in Morden Park and work in the City, then on Saturday head up west to the Shaftesbury Theatre to see Charles Crawford in Just a Kiss. And imagine how different life in south London could be in 100 years time, simply because entrepreneurs had the foresight to build an electric railway everyone by then will totally take for granted.
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