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Battersea Tangle
The railway network as of 2023. (Light grey lines show the unrelated London Underground routes)
Lines opened
1838LSWR to Nine Elms
1846LSWR Clapham Junction to Richmond
1848LSWR to Vauxhall and Waterloo
1856WELCPR Crystal Palace to Wandsworth Common
1858WELCPR Wandsworth Common to Pimlico
1860LBSCR to Victoria
1861WLER to Latchmere Junctions
1862LCDR Herne Hill to Stewart's Lane
1865WLER spur to Waterloo line
1866LSWR/LCDR spur from Windsor line to Longhedge Junction
1867
  • High level lines
  • Jan LCDR
  • May LBSCR South London line
  • Dec LBSCR Main line
1867LCDR parallel line Brixton to Victoria for LBSCR traffic
1990Eurostar flyover

The Battersea Tangle is a complex set of railway lines and junctions in Battersea, south of the River Thames in London. It grew up around the lines built to reach Waterloo and Victoria stations (and earlier termini) by several competing and cooperating railway companies. It has included a number of goods depots, as well as engine sheds, carriage sidings, and larger railway workshops. It is sometimes referred to as Clapham Junction, after its principal station.

Most of the routes were established between 1838 and 1867, after which time the development of the surrounding area made new lines impractical. New goods depots were added after this date, and the track alignments and junctions were adjusted to meet changing requirements. A new flyover, above existing tracks, was added in 1990 to allow Eurostar trains to reach Waterloo.

Name and extent[edit]

Definition[edit]

Architectural historian Priscilla Metcalf records 'The Battersea Tangle' as a railwaymen's term for the 'fortuitous concourse of railway lines northeast of Clapham Junction',[1] Tim Sherwood describes it as 'the maze of lines between Clapham Junction and Nine Elms'[2] in his history of railways in that area, while Andrew Saint and Colin Thom, in the Survey of London, use the phrase to describe the outcome of four railway companies trying to interconnect with each other in Battersea while protecting their own assets and business.[3]

Railway historian Edwin Course gives a definition[4] equivalent to this: the Battersea Tangle is the confluence of seven railway lines coming from five directions. From the south, clockwise, they are

This is the area covered by the Sketch map of the Battersea 'Tangle' in Sherwood's book.[5]

Locations[edit]

Map all coordinates using OpenStreetMap

Download coordinates as:

Open stations[edit]

Closed stations[edit]

Junctions[edit]

Other locations[edit]

Development[edit]

The north-eastern portion of Battersea Fields in 1848, seen from Pavilion Terrace, on the north edge of Battersea New Town. In the future:
  • The WELCPR low-level lines will come from behind the artist's right and cross to Pimlico Station to the left of the ponds
  • The LCDR high-level lines will come from the artist's left and continue between Pimlico Station and the ponds, to cross the river
  • Battersea Dogs & Cats Home will be built immediately in front of the artist
  • Battersea Power Station will be built where the ponds are

In the early years of the ninteenth century, the area between Clapham Common and the Thames was mostly open fields. Among them were found Long Hedge Farm, the market gardens of Samuel Poupart, Lavender Hill and the Falcon brook, all of which left their names to later railway features.

Market gardens lay below Lavender Hill. "This was dairy-farm and market-garden country, supplying food for London." [6] Longhedge Farm's northern border was the long hedge on the line of what is now Battersea Park Road (A3205) [7]

Nine Elms and Waterloo lines[edit]

  • Steamer connection to Old Swan Wharf. (Jackson)[8]
  • Latter 1850s: "...steamboats for the City left Nine Elms Pier ... every ten minutes all day." [9]


The Royal Station[edit]

Queen Victoria purchased Osborne House on the Isle of Wight in 1845, and thereafter she and Prince Albert regularly took the train from Nine Elms to Gosport. When Nine Elms closed to passengers in 1848, becoming only a goods depot, the Queen still found Nine Elms more convenient than Waterloo, and the LSWR continued to make it available to her by special arrangement. However, hosting royalty in a goods depot was impractical, so in 1854 the LSWR created a private station on a siding to the south of the lines to Waterloo. The station was approached by a carriage drive off Wandsworth Road, and at first had only an awning, but in 1857 a luxuriously appointed waiting room was built for her Majesty and her guests. After the Prince Consort's death in 1861 the station was used less. It finally closed and was removed when the viaduct was widened in 1891.[10]

London Necropolis Railway[edit]

In 1854, the London Necropolis and National Mausoleum Company started a train-based funeral service, running from its own station beside Waterloo Station, out to Brookwood Cemetery, where a short branch allowed trains to deliver both coffins and mourners direct to the mortuary chapels. Renamed the London Necropolis Railway in 1927, it continued operating until its Waterloo terminus was destroyed by bombing on 16 April 1941. In practice, the trains were composed of LSWR (later SR) locomotives and rolling stock (apart from the specially-built hearse carriages), run by those companies, and the LNR owned no track except at Waterloo and Brookwood, running through Battersea on the Waterloo–Basingstoke line.[11][12]

Pimlico and Victoria lines[edit]

West London lines and junctions[edit]

High level lines to Victoria[edit]

Goods depots[edit]

By 1896, Battersea contained two railway works, three engine sheds, six passenger stations, seven goods yards and two riverside wharves, belonging to seven different railway companies.

- D. R. Pollock

- The Wandsworth Historian (1972)[13]

LSWR Nine Elms[edit]

LBSCR Battersea Park[edit]

LCDR Stewarts Lane[edit]

[14], closed 1970 [15]

LNWR Falcon Lane Goods and Coal[edit]

MR Wandsworth Road[edit]

GWR South Lambeth[edit]

Purchase of land by GWR[16] Account of depot [17]

Locomotive sheds and works[edit]

LSWR Nine Elms[edit]

Nine Elms history, maps and pictures

LBSCR Battersea Park[edit]

LCDR Longhedge (later Stewart's Lane)[edit]

[18]

Clapham Junction Locomotive and Carriage Sheds[edit]

Later changes[edit]

Railways around Clapham Junction
Legend
Waterloo London Underground London River Services
London Underground Victoria
Vauxhall London Underground London River Services
Grosvenor Bridge
over River Thames
Linford curve
built for Eurostar
Stewarts Lane Junction
Battersea Park
South London line limited service
Chatham Main Line &
South London line
Queenstown Road
South London line
to Wandsworth Road
Stewarts Lane TMD
Longhedge Junctions
by 1912 RCH map
changed after grouping
and end of freight service
Poupart's Junction
West London Extn Jcn
Latchmere Junction
for Waterloo
Latchmere Main Junction
Latchmere Southwest Jcn
West London Line
Ludgate Junction
Clapham Junction
London Overground
Carriage sidings
Falcon Junction
Brighton Main Line
to Brighton

Grouping[edit]

Electrification[edit]

Eurostar[edit]

In popular culture[edit]

The British Transport Commission proposed, in 1951, that a museum for larger railway exhibits should be established at the disused Nine Elms station, which then still had its 1838 facade. However, British Railways would not release the building; the exhibits were moved to a bus garage in Clapham, and eventually to the National Railway Museum in York.[19]

In 1961, the artist Terence Cuneo was commissioned by British Railway's Southern Region to paint a poster of Clapham Junction.

Here was a veritable Grand Canyon of railway impedimenta. A vast area of tracks, points and crossovers, signal gantries, bridges and station platforms and out of this tangled medley I had to pick a view which would display the Junction to best advantage.

— Terence Cuneo, The Railway Painting of Terence Cuneo (1984)

Cuneo chose the gantry supporting 'A' signal box[20] as the viewpoint for a painting[21] of the trains and tracks spreading out through Clapham Junction station to the west. He added a variety of trains and locomotives to the picture as they passed, but when he submitted his initial efforts to the scrutiny of the men in the signal box, he found he had to rearrange all but two of them to comply with the railwaymen's professional regard for regulations and timetables.[22]

The tracks and warehouses of the ex-GWR South Lambeth goods depot appear in the foreground of the cover picture of Pink Floyd's 1977 album Animals.

Related topics[edit]

Testing the pneumatic railway in 1861. In the background is the line to Victoria, running through Battersea (later Battersea Park) Station and over the Grosvenor Bridge, with a south-bound train on the bridge. Behind that is the southern suspension tower of the Chelsea Bridge.

See also[edit]

Notes and references[edit]

Notes[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Metcalf 1978, p. 10.
  2. ^ Sherwood 1994, p. 68.
  3. ^ Saint & Thom 2013c, p. 8.
  4. ^ Course 1962, p. 108.
  5. ^ Sherwood 1994, p. 91.
  6. ^ Metcalf 1978, p. 11.
  7. ^ Metcalf 1978, p. 12.
  8. ^ londoninheritance 2017.
  9. ^ Metcalf 1978, p. 14.
  10. ^ Saint & Thom 2013c, pp. 4, 22.
  11. ^ Jackson 1972, pp. 220–221, 385.
  12. ^ National Transport Trust 2023.
  13. ^ Pollock 1972, p. 4.
  14. ^ Saint & Thom 2013c, pp. 29.
  15. ^ Saint & Thom 2013c, pp. 30.
  16. ^ GLIAS 2018.
  17. ^ Waters 1993, pp. 104, 105, 107.
  18. ^ Saint & Thom 2013c, pp. 27–30.
  19. ^ Midgley 2012.
  20. ^ Faulkner 1991, p. 32.
  21. ^ Cuneo 1961.
  22. ^ Cuneo 1984, pp. 42–43.
  23. ^ Steadman 2016.
  24. ^ Garnsworthy 2023.

Sources[edit]

Further reading[edit]

External links[edit]


Category:Battersea Category:Rail infrastructure in London Category:History of rail transport in London Category:Transport in the London Borough of Wandsworth

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