Greenwich Park railway station was a railway station in Greenwich, London opened in 1888 by the London, Chatham and Dover Railway. It was intended to rival the South Eastern Railway's Greenwich railway station which had opened over 50 years earlier. It served as the terminus for the Greenwich Park branch, which ran from Nunhead to Greenwich Park. It took its name from the nearby Greenwich Park, home of the Royal Observatory.[1]
Despite being on a prime location (on Stockwell Street), it failed to attract sufficient passenger numbers possibly because the rival Greenwich station offered a more direct journey into central London. Due to wartime economies, and along with several other London railway stations it closed in 1917. The section between Nunhead and Lewisham Road was reopened in 1929 by the Southern Railway concurrent with opening a new connecting spur to Lewisham and providing the company with another route into central London.[2] The section between Lewisham Road and Greenwich Park was officially abandoned in 1929.
After 1929 the station was demolished and the cutting occupied by the trackbed and platforms was infilled. Today the site is occupied by a hotel and its car park. Nothing remains today of the railway infrastructure north-east of Lewisham Road station except a short section of embankment adjacent to St Johns station. A direct rail link between Greenwich and Lewisham was not restored until the Lewisham extension to the Docklands Light Railway opened in 1999.
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The line from Nunhead had terminated initially at Blackheath Hill (opened 1871) and it was not until 1881 that the LCDR deposited a bill to extend to Greenwich Park. The LCDR chairman explined to the shareholders "We should not have spent £450,000 to get to the bottom of Blackheath Hill. The raison d'etre was to get to the heart of Greenwich. Everybody knows what the Greenwich traffic is; it is an astounding traffic". The station opened on 1 October 1888 and was aligned to join the South Eastern line at a junction east of the exisitng Greenwich station.
Greenwich Park station consisted of three curved platforms and an engine release road. All three platforms had awnings for more or less their whole length. There was an engine siding and inspection pit situated behind the signal box which was located at the throat of the station. The station was situated below street level in a cutting (as was most of the line between Blackheath Hill railway station and Greenwich Park). The station building was a generous brick built structure with a booking hall, refreshment room and first and second class ladies rooms leading off it. Stairs led down to the concourse at the head of the platforms.
A house for the station master was provided in Burney Street.
In January 1899 there was 43 arrivals and 55 departures on a weekday with 21 services on a Sunday. Most services terminated at Nunhead although some services ran through to the City or London Victoria. By 1913 there were 55 down and 43 up services each day with only 11 services on a Sunday. Journey time on the branch (from Nunhead to Greenwich Park) was 9 minutes. Through trains to St Paul's (Blackfriars station) took around 30 minutes.
It is likely that most trains were formed of LCDR 4 wheelers headed by a D class 0-4-2T engine. In 1913 a P class 0-6-0T with a bogie coach at each end appeared on the branch and it was this that ran the last passenger service on 31 December 1916. Surviving photographs show P class no 325, D class no 89 Hecate and coaching set 271 all worked the line at some point.
After the closure of the line in 1917 the site lay dormant although it was not until 1926 that the London & Home Counties Traffic Advisory Committee accepted the Southern Railway's assertion that the railway traffic had left for good. It is not known when the site was cleared – possibly just before the line was severed in the St Johns area (1929) and the west end of the branch joined to Lewisham seems the most likely date and a 1928 picture of nearby Blackheath Hill shows rails in situ (and heavily overgrown). The station building survived until the 1960s and in the intervening years it was used as a billiard hall and builders offices. There is one remaining piece of infrastructure on the site – a portion of bridge wall is situated on Burney Street and other bridge wall sections from the approaching line can be seen in Peton Place. A short section of embankment survives between Brookmill Road and the South Eastern Main line through St Johns station .
| Preceding station | Disused railways | Following station | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blackheath Hill | London, Chatham & Dover Railway Greenwich Park branch |
Terminus | ||
3 Holborn Viaduct to Lewisham: Mitchell and Smith 1990 ISBN 0 906520 81 9 4 London's Local Railways: Alan A jackson 1999 ISBN 1 85414 209 7