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- Herausgeber: The History Press
- Kategorie: Lebensstil
- Sprache: Englisch
The names of the 300 or so London underground stations are part of the everyday landscape for the Londoners, who strap-hang their way across the capital. We hardly ever question their meanings or origins - yet these well-known names are linked with fascinating stories of bygone times. Until the mid-19th century, London was almost unbelievably rural, with names belonging to a countryside we could never recognise or imagine today. Who in the twenty-first century, thinks of a real flesh-and-blood shepherd lolling back on a specially-trimmed hawthorn bush, when travelling through Shepherd's Bush underground station? And who, travelling through Totteridge and Whetstone on the Northern Line, imagines medieval soldiers sharpening their swords and daggers at the aptly named Whetstone, just before engaging in the appallingly bloody battle of Barnet? David Hilliam not only uncovers the little-known history behind the station stops below ground, but also explores the eccentric etymology of some of London's landmarks from Acton to Wimbledon, offering trivia boxes that will delight the visitor and Londoner alike. This entertaining book will ensure that you will never view your normal journey to work in the same way again.
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Seitenzahl: 170
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2010
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CONTENTS
Introduction
A Brief Timeline
Acknowledgements
A–Z of Tube Station Names
Capital Words
A Selection of Famous London Names
Recommended Further Reading
INTRODUCTION
The names of the 300 or so London Underground stations are so familiar to us as we strap-hang our way across the capital that we take them utterly for granted. We hardly ever question their meanings or origins – yet these well-known names are almost always linked with fascinating stories of bygone times.
Until the mid-nineteenth century, London was unbelievably rural, with names belonging to a countryside that we would neither recognise nor could imagine today. The old fields and turnpikes, market gardens and trees and bushes have completely disappeared, but their names still remain – given extra permanence as they are now forever enshrined as parts of our Underground network.
But who, in the twenty-first century, thinks of a real flesh and blood shepherd lolling back on a specially trimmed hawthorn bush, when travelling through Shepherd’s Bush Underground Station? Who nowadays thinks of the original gigantic Fairlop Oak at the far end of the Central Line? And who, travelling through Totteridge and Whetstone on the Northern Line, imagines medieval soldiers sharpening their swords and daggers at the aptly named Whetstone just before engaging in the appallingly bloody battle of Barnet?
What about all those fifth-and sixth-century Saxon chieftains all bringing their families and followers to settle into what was dangerous new territory for them on a foreign island? Padda and Tota, Brihtsige and Wemba – none of them have any memorial, except that we unconsciously use their names as we speak of Paddington, Tottenham, Brixton and Wembley.
This book is not about the Underground itself, but about the names to be found on the network lines. It is hoped that both hardened old commuters and fresh-eyed new visitors to London will find this collection of origins an intriguing pathway into the rich, half-hidden history of England’s capital…
… and as an extra, the second part of this book contains a short selection of other well-known London place-names with particularly interesting derivations.
David Hilliam
A BRIEF TIMELINE
The history of the various London Underground lines is complicated, as they were gradually formed bit by bit through the amalgamation of different railway companies. However, here is a much-abbreviated timeline.
A cartoon in Punch, 26 September 1846, when the London underground railway was first proposed. The very idea was considered to be ludicrous.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Most of the illustrations are taken from Old and New London by Walter Thornbury and Edward Walford, published in 1897 by Cassell and Company Ltd. The exceptions are: the cartoon ‘A Prophetic View of the Subterranean Railways’, which appeared in Punch on 16 September 1846; the illustrations of Old Charing Cross, Swiss Cottage and the Fairlop Oak, which were taken from London Stories by ‘John O’ London’; and the drawing of the bull’s head at Hornchurch, which was drawn by the author.
A–Z OF TUBE STATION NAMES
ACTON TOWN W3
District and Piccadilly
Originally opened on 1 July 1879 as MILL HILL PARK
Name changed to ACTON TOWN on 1 March 1910
‘Acton’ means ‘farm among the oak-trees’ – coming from two Saxon words: ac, ‘oak-tree’ and tun, ‘farm’ or ‘settlement’. Most English place names beginning with ‘Ac’ derive from the once plentiful crop of oak trees that grew there. There are over twenty other ‘Acton’ place names in the British Isles.
ALDGATE EC3
Circle and Metropolitan
Opened on 18 November 1876
‘Old Gate’. One of the six gates built by the Romans in London’s city wall. From here the road from London led to the Roman capital of Britain – Colchester. The gate was already old when the Saxons came here in the fifth century, so they called it Ealdgate. Pulled down in 1761, its name still lives on as an Underground station.
The original Aldgate, demolished in 1761.
ALDGATE EAST E1
Hammersmith & City, District
Opened on 6 October 1884
Re-sited on 31 October 193
Obviously the name is borrowed from Aldgate, the Underground station that had been opened eight years earlier. It had been proposed to call it Commercial Road, but in the end the name Aldgate East won the day, despite the fact that it is not sited particularly close to the original London gate. See ALDGATE.
ALDWYCH WC2
A ‘lost’ station on the Piccadilly Line
Opened as STRAND on 30 November 1907
Name changed to ALDWYCH on 9 May 1915
Closed on 30 September 1994
Old Underground maps show Aldwych at the end of a branch-line from Holborn. Although now no longer in use, the name is too interesting to forget. When the Saxon King Alfred (871–899) defeated the invading Danes, he generously allowed some of them to live on in this area, under his rule. At that time it was well outside the city walls.
This Danish settlement was known by the Saxons as Aldwic – the ‘old village’ and the Church of St Clement Danes is said to be on the site of the old Danish burial ground. Drury Lane was known as Via de Aldwych in the Middle Ages, and the name was revived when this part of London, together with an Underground station, was modernised in the early twentieth century.
Sadly, Aldwych Underground Station was closed on 30 September 1994. It is one of more than forty London Underground stations that have closed or been re-sited over the years.
ALL SAINTS E14
Docklands
Opened on 31 August 1987
Named after All Saints’ church in East India Dock Road, which was built in the years 1821–23. The parish of Poplar was created in 1821 and the parishioners raised over £30,000 – a very considerable sum in those days – to build their parish church. Designed by Charles Hollis, the church was consecrated in 1823.
ALPERTON MIDDLESEX
Piccadilly
Opened as PERIVALE-ALPERTON on 28 June 1903
Name changed to ALPERTON on 7 October 1910
The name comes from a Saxon chief named Ealhbeart. It is Ealhbeart’s tun, or ‘settlement’.
AMERSHAM BUCKINGHAMSHIRE
The terminus of the Metropolitan Line
Opened on 1 September 1892
Named after a Saxon landowner called Ealgmund. It is Ealgmund’s ham, or ‘homestead’.
ANGEL N1
Northern
Opened on 17 November 1901
The Angel was, for centuries, one of the most important inns in England, as it was the nearest staging post to London on the Great North Road (nowadays upstaged by the M1 motorway). The Angel was mentioned by Charles Dickens in Oliver Twist and it remained an inn until 1899. It later became a Lyons’ Corner House. The site has now been taken over by a bank. The Underground station serves to remind us of the famous inn that once stood here.
ARCHWAY N19
Northern
Opened as HIGHGATE on 22 June 1907
Name changed to ARCHWAY (HIGHGATE) on 11 June 1939
Name changed to HIGHGATE (ARCHWAY) on 19 January 1941
Changed finally to ARCHWAY in December 1947
The Underground station and the North London district of Archway take their name from Archway Road, first built in 1813 with an impressive viaduct designed by John Nash (1752–1835) in the style of a Roman aqueduct, 36 feet high (11 metres) and 18 feet wide (5.48 metres). The present viaduct used by the road was designed and built in 1897 by Sir Alexander Binnie (1839–1917).
Archway is near the spot where Dick Whittington famously heard the bells of London telling him to ‘Turn again, Whittington … thrice Mayor of London!’
ARNOS GROVE N14
Piccadilly
Opened on 19 September 1932
Arnos Grove was the former name of a large country house built on the site of a medieval religious house known as Arnholt Wood in the fourteenth century. It is now a beautiful retirement home called Southgate Beaumont – but its original name is preserved in the name of the Underground station, opened in 1932.
ARSENAL N5
Piccadilly
Opened as GILLESPIE ROAD on 15 December 1906
Name changed to ARSENAL (HIGHBURY HILL) on 31 October 1932
Use of HIGHBURY HILL gradually dropped over the years
Arsenal Football Club was founded in 1886, with its first football ground in Woolwich. Arsenal Underground Station is named after this ground. However, Arsenal Football Club moved to its Highbury Stadium in 1913.
There was an establishment here for making and testing arms dating from Tudor times, and was granted the title Royal Arsenal by George III in 1805. During the Second World War it employed 40,000 workers making armaments. However, Royal Arsenal ceased to be a military establishment in 1994 and has now been developed for housing.
BAKER STREET NW1
Bakerloo, Circle, Hammersmith & City, Jubilee and
Metropolitan
Opened on 10 January 1863
Baker Street itself is not named after any bread maker. The Baker after whom the street is named was William Baker, a builder in the mid-eighteenth century who originally laid out the road. Opened on 10 January 1863, this station saw the first underground journey in the world.
SHERLOCK HOLMES IN BAKER STREET
Baker Street is famous throughout the English-speaking world as the street where the detective Sherlock Holmes lived.
The house on which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle based his fiction was actually No. 21, the home of his friend Dr Malcolm Morris. In 1866 Conan Doyle thoroughly examined the house and based his ‘No. 221A’ on it. He made one alteration, however, to disguise it from the prying public: he gave his imaginary house only two front windows instead of three.
221B Baker Street is now the Sherlock Holmes Museum.
BALHAM SW12
Northern
Opened on 6 December 1926
The name Balham was first recorded in AD 957 as Bælgenham – which possibly meant that it was a ‘smooth or rounded enclosure’. A more likely explanation is that it was the ham, or ‘homestead’, of a Saxon chief named Bealga.
BANK EC2
Central, Docklands, Northern, Waterloo & City
Waterloo & City opened as CITY on 8 August 1898
Northern Line opened as BANK on 25 February 1900
Central Line opened as BANK on 30 July 1900
Waterloo & City renamed BANK on 26 October 1940
Docklands Line opened as BANK on 29 July 1991
Bank gets its name because it is so near the Bank of England, founded in 1694. The actual Bank of England building however, designed by Sir John Soane, dates from 1788.
The word ‘bank’ comes from the Italian word banco, meaning a ‘bench’ – this particular bench would have been that on which money changers would display their money.
BARBICAN EC2
Circle, Hammersmith & City, Metropolitan
Opened as ALDERSGATE STREET on 23 December 1865
Name changed to ALDERSGATE & BARBICAN in 1923
Changed finally to BARBICAN on 1 December 1968
The development of this area since the Second World War, with the new Guildhall School of Music and Drama and its theatre and concert hall, has given the name Barbican a totally new meaning for Londoners. In fact, it’s easy to forget just what a barbican originally was.
During the castle-building days of the Middle Ages, a ‘barbican’ was an outer fortification or watchtower outside the main walls. Here in London, the Barbican was some sort of extra defence work constructed outside the main wall. Unfortunately, we can’t be certain what it looked like as it was pulled down by Henry III in 1267 after his civil war with the barons.
Aldersgate itself was one of the six gates in the city wall originally built by the Romans. The origin of the word ‘barbican’ is uncertain – but it has been suggested that it derives from an Arab or Persian term barbar khanah, meaning ‘house on the wall’.
BAKERLOO – A ‘GUTTER TITLE’!
Hundreds of thousands of people travel on the Bakerloo Line every day – and no one is in the least bothered about its name.
However, when the line first opened in 1906, many Londoners were quite disgusted by this brand new name, coined by the Evening News.
It was the first Underground line to run from north to south in London, linking Baker Street and Waterloo, so it seemed quite natural to invent this rather chirpy name for it.
However, in The Railway Magazine, an outraged reader called Bakerloo a ‘gutter title’ and complained that such a name ‘is not what we expect from a railway company. English railway officers have more dignity than to act in this manner.’
What a horror! But then, this was Edwardian England!
BARKING ESSEX
Central (see BARKINGSIDE)
Opened by the London, Tilbury & Southend Railway on 13 April 1854
First used by Underground trains on 2 June 1902
BARKINGSIDE ESSEX
District, Hammersmith & City
Opened by the Great Eastern Railway on 1 May 1903
First used by Underground trains on 31 May 1948
‘Berica’s people’. Like so many English place names, Barking comes from the name of a Saxon leader – in this case, Berica – who came here and settled with his family and friends. The Old Saxon word ingas meant ‘family’ or ‘followers’, so place names containing ‘ing’ almost always point to a Saxon chief and his group of followers. Other examples include Tooting, Paddington and Kensington.
BARONS COURT W14
District, Piccadilly
Opened on 9 October 1905
This is not an ancient name. In fact it was invented in the late nineteenth century by Sir William Palliser for his housing development to the west of North End Road. He probably intended it as a sort of companion piece to the name Earls Court, but there is no connection between the two. As with so many place names, it became firmly established when it was adopted by the Underground system as a station name.
BAYSWATER W2
Circle, District
Opened on 1 October 1868
Bayswater has a fascinating derivation. According to an old medieval legend, Charlemagne (747–814), the great king of the Franks, gave a magical horse to four brothers. When only one of these brothers was mounted, the horse was of normal size, but if all four brothers mounted it, the horse would miraculously lengthen itself to seat them all!
The Bayswater Conduit in 1798: ‘a watering-place for horses’.
The name of this extraordinary steed was Bayard, and the story was so famous throughout Europe in medieval times that the very name Bayard came to mean a horse.
It seems a far cry from Charlemagne to Bayswater, but in fact the name Bayswater is derived from a drinking place for horses – a ‘Bayards’ Watering’.
The point is that there are natural springs nearby, which once provided refreshment for many generations of ‘bayards’.
BECKTON E6
BECKTON PARK E6
Docklands
Both stations opened on 28 March 1994
So many London names are derived from Saxon chieftains that it may come as a surprise to learn that the district known as Beckton comes from the name of a nineteenth-century producer of coal gas – Simon Adams Beck. He was the governor of the Gas Light and Coke Co., which bought a site in East Ham and was particularly successful in bringing the benefits of cheap gas lighting to London.
BECONTREE ESSEX
District
Opened as GALE STREET by the London Midland & Scottish Railway on28 June 1926
Name changed to BECONTREE on 18 July 1932
First used by Underground trains on 12 September 1932
‘Beohha’s tree’. In early Saxon times, trees were often used as landmarks for meetings and assemblies. The Saxon chief Beohha must have used this easily recognisable tree to serve as a rallying point.
Belsize House in 1800, demolished in 1854.
BELSIZE PARK NW3
Northern
Opened on 22 June 1907
The name is a reminder of Belsize Manor, an important manor house that existed in one form or another from the fourteenth century until it was pulled down in 1854.
The house and grounds were large and beautiful – Samuel Pepys thought the gardens were the most noble he had ever seen. Its very name – Belsize – came from two Norman French words: bel assis, meaning ‘beautifully situated’.
BERMONDSEY SE1
Jubilee
Opened on 17 September 1999
‘Beormund’s island’. This isn’t really an island, but the name refers to an original Saxon settlement here on slightly higher land among the watery marshes. Beormund was the Saxon chief who lived here with his followers.
BETHNAL GREEN E1
Central
Opened on 4 December 1946
Bethnal is another Saxon name. The second part of the word means ‘corner’, but it is not known whether the first part refers to a stream or a person. ‘Bethnal’ could have meant a corner or bend in a river, or else a ‘place where Blytha lives’.
THE BLITZ AND ‘BOMBERS’ MOONS’
During the Blitz in the Second World War, seventy-nine Underground stations were used regularly as air-raid shelters. It has been estimated that 177,000 people used them. The Liverpool Street extension had not been completed at that time, so no trains were running along that stretch of line under the East End. The result was that many people literally lived there for weeks at a time.
The parts of London worst affected by the Blitz were Holborn, the City, Westminster, Shoreditch, Southwark and Stepney. The Thames was a perfect navigation aid for the German bombers, especially when there was a full moon. Londoners came to call these ‘bombers’ moons’.
BLACKFRIARS SE1
Circle, District
Opened on 30 May 1870
In 1221 a monastery was founded in Chancery Lane for Dominican monks. Dominicans, by tradition, always wore black habits, so the monastery became known for its ‘black friars’.
The monastery was closed down in 1538 by Henry VIII, but it had been a place of great importance. Parliaments had met there, and a court sitting there heard the divorce case against Catherine of Aragon, Henry VIII’s first wife.
The black-robed monks are remembered in the names of Blackfriars Road, Blackfriars Bridge and other places in this area. The only piece of the original monastery left today is a part of a wall in Ireland Yard. In 1613 William Shakespeare bought a house nearby for £124 – but did not live in it himself.
BLACKHORSE ROAD E17
Victoria
Opened on 1 September 1968
Blackhorse Road was built on Blackhorse Fields, and both road and fields took their name from the Blackhorse Inn in Evelyn Street. Black horses still feature in the attractive artwork decorating this station. Despite this, however, a conflicting fact exists – the Blackhorse Road was called Black House Lane in the early nineteenth century – so are the horses simply the result of mispronunciation? We will never know.
BLACKWALL E14
Docklands
Opened on 28 March 1994
The name Blackwall comes from the black artificial bank constructed here to enable building to take place along the marshy banks of the Thames. The area was used for making and repairing ships and was also a place of arrival and departure. The Virginia Settlers under Captain John Smith set off from here in 1606 to found the first permanent colony in America.
BOND STREET W1
Central, Jubilee
Opened on 24 September 1900
Sir Thomas Bond, a seventeenth-century speculator, developed this area when he bought the land in 1664, hence, Bond Street.
It quickly became a fashionable shopping area, and over the years many famous people have taken lodgings above the shops: Jonathan Swift, Edward Gibbon, William Pitt the Elder, Lawrence Sterne, James Boswell, Admiral Nelson and his mistress Lady Hamilton.
‘Prinny’ – the Prince of Wales who later became George IV – had a bet with Charles James Fox, the liberal statesman, as to how many cats they would see on either side of Bond Street as they took a stroll there. Fox easily won the bet – thirteen cats to none – as he had cunningly chosen the sunny side!
BOROUGH SE1
Northern
Opened on 18 December 1890
The borough here is the Borough of Southwark, famous for being the setting off point for Chaucer’s Canterbury pilgrims.
