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Your favourite evocatively-named stations (both past and present)

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Lucan

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Sticking to London :-

Parsons Green
Stamford Brook
Barons Court
Primrose Hill
Royal Oak
Shepherds Bush
Old Oak Common (proposed)

They all sound so rural don't they?
Perhaps we should have some negative ones : Mudchute, Spitalfields, Neasden (standing joke in Private Eye), Cheam (ditto Tony Hancock), Harringay (supposed venue of the National Boredom Championships).

I like the abruptness of Temple.
 
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Bevan Price

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Thatto Heath - where I used to go to watch steam trains before starting school homework.
Origin of name not certain, but has been suggested to be a corruption of "That way to the heath".

Some closed station names in the St. Helens area include:
Crank
Rookery Halt
Clock Face
Moss Bank
 

Joe Paxton

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The DLR gives three I like...

Gallions Reach
Pudding Mill Lane
Mudchute (as previously mentioned on this thread)

Abbey Road DLR station sees a fair few lost Beatlemaniacs on a pilgrimage, I wonder if Cyprus ends up with disappointed arriving travellers ;)

(An aside - Mudchute was apparently chosen as a name instead of Millwall, for fear that visiting footie fans might end up on the wrong side of the Thames - no similar consideration seems to have applied to Abbey Road)
 

Calthrop

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Abbey Road DLR station sees a fair few lost Beatlemaniacs on a pilgrimage, I wonder if Cyprus ends up with disappointed arriving travellers ;)

(An aside - Mudchute was apparently chosen as a name instead of Millwall, for fear that visiting footie fans might end up on the wrong side of the Thames - no similar consideration seems to have applied to Abbey Road)

Could it be to do with Millwall fans' notoriety for being often, shall we say, turbulent -- it thus not being wished to tempt them to vent their rage on their surroundings; whereas Beatles devotees seen as likely to be more peaceable?
 

Fearless

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I always loved to be at New Street (wait, I haven't finished) when the Clansman was being announced. From the mundanities of Wolverhampton, Crewe and Wigan, we were transported to Pitlochry, Blair Atholl and Kingussie. It really felt like a journey to another world.
 

341o2

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Llanfair pg. I wonder how much practice Jane Fonda did to be able to say the name in full in Barbarella
Since the discussion on the L&B, Ballybunion sounds like Paddy at the doctors with a painful foot
Esgairgeliog and Fridd Gate on the Corris railway
And although a freight only line, may I mention Ting Tang on the Redruth and Chasewater railway
 

Dr_Paul

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Swine on the now-closed line to Hornsea in Yorkshire. Naming a station after farmyard livestock has always amused me.
 

Calthrop

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Since the discussion on the L&B, Ballybunion sounds like Paddy at the doctors with a painful foot

Swine on the now-closed line to Hornsea in Yorkshire. Naming a station after farmyard livestock has always amused me.

While I'm aware that the object of this thread is not to "pour cold water on things" by giving the derivations from way back, of comical-sounding names: I understand that Ballybunion means, in the Irish language, "the place or settlement of the Bunion family" (cognate with our Pilgrim's Progress John Bunyan?); and that Swine, East Yorkshire, is possibly derived from the Old English swin = creek.
 

Calthrop

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Continuing in my role of derivations-supplying "boar ;)": Cowes has a more direct "livestock" relevance: originating it seems, in the 15th century, from two sandbanks one on each side of the mouth of the river Medina, thought to bear a visual resemblance to cows. The name went thence, through stages of development --

https:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowes (failed "linking" attempt -- can be "typed in")

A pity that there was never an offshoot of the LNWR / Midland Joint system, serving Sheepy Magna and Parva in Leicestershire...
 

Dr_Paul

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Swine, East Yorkshire, is possibly derived from the Old English swin = creek.

I was being a bit cheeky when I ventured that the village of Swine was named after pigs. Place names in England are often rooted in an Old English word or phrase that may not correspond directly or even indirectly with today's English language.

And so Barking has nothing to do with dogs, but refers to the settlement of the Berica family. On the other hand, Catford is named after cats; it's a ford that is frequented by wild cats.
 
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Cowley

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I was being a bit cheeky when I ventured that the village of Swine was named after pigs. Place names in England are often rooted in an Old English word or phrase that may not correspond directly or even indirectly with today's English language.
I used to live in a place called Skinners Bottom. I'm sure my father picked it due to sniggering value.
 

Dr_Paul

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Central on the old Gallions line in East London intrigued me; just Central, nothing else. The only prospective passenger in the attached picture seems to be the station cat.
 

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Lucan

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Ruislip Gardens, because of John Betjeman's poem "Middlesex", from the first verse of which :-

Gaily into Ruislip Gardens
Runs the red electric train
.........
Out into the outskirt's edges
Where a few surviving hedges
Keep alive our lost Elysium - rural Middlesex again.


Only Betjeman could have thought of writing poetry about the London Underground, and did so with his effortlessly perfect cadence, alliteration and rhyming.

There is nothing pretty about Ruislip Gardens station, a brutal concrete structure on a high draughty embankment; but that was Betjeman's point, contrasting the dreary suburbs with the rural landscape they replaced. In an earlier post I listed some London Stations quaintly named after the countryside features that were once there.

"Adlestrop" has already been mentioned :smile:
 

Busaholic

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And although a freight only line, may I mention Ting Tang on the Redruth and Chasewater railway
It's a great shame that Ding Dong mine, a few miles to the west of Ting Tang, never got a rail connection! I know someone who lives in the settlement of the same name and he still gets pleasure from the reaction of strangers when he gives his address!
 

Dr_Paul

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Only Betjeman could have thought of writing poetry about the London Underground, and did so with his effortlessly perfect cadence, alliteration and rhyming.

Private Eye had a poem about their favourite London suburb. The first lines went:

Neasden
Aren't you glad you just
Breezed in?​

Not quite up to the Betjeman level, I fear.
 

Bevan Price

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I was being a bit cheeky when I ventured that the village of Swine was named after pigs. Place names in England are often rooted in an Old English word or phrase that may not correspond directly or even indirectly with today's English language.

And so Barking has nothing to do with dogs, but refers to the settlement of the Berica family. On the other hand, Catford is named after cats; it's a ford that is frequented by wild cats.
According to the Oxford Dictionary of British Place Names, Swine (formerly Suuine) means " Place at the creek or channel"

However, Swindon means "Hill where pigs are kept", and
Swinton (in England) = "Pig farm".
 

SwindonBert

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According to the Oxford Dictionary of British Place Names, Swine (formerly Suuine) means " Place at the creek or channel"

However, Swindon means "Hill where pigs are kept", and
Swinton (in England) = "Pig farm".

This has been disputed, some people say it's Sweyn's dun (hill)
 

ag51ruk

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Eltham Well Hall had a slightly exotic ring to it.

If we included non-UK stations, Emu Plains in West Sydney is a nice enough place but more suburban than the name suggests!
 

Bedpan

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Has anybody done Besses o the Barn yet? I can’t imagine they haven’t but I didn’t see it while looking through the thread.
 
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