Names which are relics of places that no longer exist

[Mcr Warrior]

Is there still a flowery field near Flowery Field station ?

The name of this particular locality (near Hyde) is very much still there.

 

[507020]

There's no junction at Burscough Junction, and hasn't been for quite a while.

But there shortly will be again, so this doesn’t count!

In Greater Manchester between Hindley Green and Atherton, there's a district long known as Dangerous Corner, and which is marked on Ordnance Survey maps as such. This is where Westleigh Lane joins the A577 road at a very standard T-junction - and was once famously (to some) the terminus of one of Leigh Corporation's bus routes.

Even 50-odd years ago I could never work out what was particularly Dangerous about this Corner - it looked quite innocuous to me. Even today, it seems there are neither traffic lights, roundabout nor any other traffic calming measures at the junction, so presumably that Corner is not that Dangerous after all.

I noticed this Dangerous Corner recently, when using the buses on an RMT strike day and was considering changing buses there, but decided against it due to the perceived danger. Could it have been that the danger was a highwayman hiding just around the corner?

The northern terminus of buses in Southport is The Plough Hotel, but the pub was demolished several years ago, probably not long after most of the buses were withdrawn!

Also the first station north of Liverpool is Sandhills, situated well within the docks, while much further north along the coast there are still many sand dunes which are the home to much natural wildlife. I wonder what could possibly have been torn up as the docks moved north.

Recently I was researching the original route of the Ribble 375/385 bus routes and found that it passed the Tawd Bridge Hotel. It does seem that any mention of this pub or the bridge directly outside it is totally extinct, with the site now being the location of the Bone Island roundabout, Skelmersdale new town.

 

[John Webb]

Woolwich Arsenal still exists, it's just not an actual arsenal any more. It's the name of the development, Royal Arsenal Riverside.

Likewise Woolwich Dockyard - ceased being a dockyard circa 1869 and then became an annex of the Arsenal!

 

[Springs Branch]

. . . Dangerous Corner . . .

Supposedly named after an overturned hearse (where the coffin's occupant apparently sprang back to life) according to a local folklore tale. Not sure why that makes the corner so particularly dangerous, though!

That's interesting - I never knew that. My grandad, a source of all sorts of weird and wonderful local stories, never told me that one - despite him cycling past Dangerous Corner twice a day en route to/from his job in Atherton.

A bit of Googling suggests that at the second attempt of burying the (female) corpse, the distraught widower said to the hearse driver something on the lines of "Take a bit more care this time, will you. It's a dangerous corner, you know!" (translated from the presumed local vernacular)

Is there still a flowery field near Flowery Field station ?

Speaking of railway stations, Ashburys station was opened to serve, and named after, the adjacent Ashbury Railway Carriage and Iron Company.

The carriage works is long gone, but the station name has persisted. As far as I know, there's never been any district in that part of Manchester known as Ashburys.

 

[181]

The village of Ratho Station west of Edinburgh, which is quite separate from Ratho itself around a mile away, is named after the station which closed in 1951.

Similarly for Halwill Junction village in Devon, located a mile from Halwill village proper, where the station closed in 1966.

Balquhidder Station, on the closed part of the Callander and Oban, is a similar example (albeit just a hamlet rather than a village).

 

[steamybrian]

Crystal Palace
The area was originally known as Upper Norwood but following opening of the Great Exhibition in 1851 with the glass "Crystal Palace" building the name gradually stuck. The building was destroyed by fire in 1936 but the area of Upper Norwood around the former building is still known as Crystal Palace.

 

[Ediswan]

Crystal Palace
The area was originally known as Upper Norwood but following opening of the Great Exhibition in 1851 with the glass "Crystal Palace" building the name gradually stuck. The building was destroyed by fire in 1936 but the area of Upper Norwood around the former building is still known as Crystal Palace.

The original Crystal Palace opened in Hyde Park in 1851. That was temporary. The parts were then used to build the new Crystal Palace (1854-1936), along with extensive gardens, dinosaur sculptures, etc.

 

[D6130]

I believe that Dunwich on the Suffolk coast nowadays comprises just a handful of houses, but was once a thriving market town and fishing port before it was lost to coastal erosion several hundred years ago. Another similar example is St Ishmaels on the Carmarthenshire coast between Kidwelly and Ferryside. At both locations, local legend has it that the bells of the lost underwater churches can be heard tolling at Low Spring Tides.

 

[Basil Jet]

Manor House is named after a former pub which is now I think flats, although it still has Manor House on the brickwork.

Royal Oak was named after a pub which is now called The Porchester. Buying a pub with a tube station named after it and then renaming it seems like burning a wheelbarrow full of tenners.

 

[Basil Jet]

Oh, and Angel (Islington) was named after a pub which is gone, but a newer pub nearby has taken the name.

 

[Strathclyder]

Singer station, in Scotland, named after the Singer sewing machine factory that closed back in 1979/1980 & which was demolished in 1998 and is no longer there.

Incidentally has the surrounding area become known as Singer since?

Think it's still just Kilbowie/Clydebank, but I'll defer to local expertise if anyone knows for definite otherwise.

Long-time Clydebank resident here (my family roots in the town can be traced back to the early 1900s at the very least) and my late grandmother worked at the factory IIRC (memory is a bit hazy there), so I'm as good an expert on this subject on this forum as one can find lol

The areas of the town the station directly serves are known as Kilbowie & Radnor Park and have been officially known as such by successive local governments and maps for decades. Given how the factory has become so firmly associated with the local area and the town as a whole, I can understand why some would think the area has officially been renamed after it, but I can assert that it hasn't.

To be precise, this specific section of the modern-day Singer branch and the station itself were both built by the North British Railway to replace the original Glasgow, Dumbarton & Helensburgh Railway's alignment and the 1879 Kilbowie station, both of which had been key to the factory's initial success after it first opened in 1883/1884 - no local housing existed at the time to house the factory's massive workforce, so a good rail link was crucial to enable easy travel to/from Glasgow and beyond - but were hindering it's massive expansion in the late 1890s/early 1900s. The current alignment was known by the NBR as the Singer Deviation as a result of this (not sure about the LNER or BR continuing to refer to it as such). In short, the current station had been built primarily to serve the factory after it's expansion was complete.

Given the massive impact the factory had on the town and it's enduring legacy (it was by far the world's largest sewing machine factory at the time, to say nothing of it's 200ft tall clock tower that towered over virtually the entire town, the second-tallest in the world when finished) and regardless of the geographically accurate names available since the factory's final closure in June 1980 (Kilbowie of course being the foremost one), I can't see the station name changing anytime soon, which is fine by me in all honesty.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

But there shortly will be again, so this doesn’t count!

Will there? News to me!

 

[507020]

Will there? News to me!

I will make sure of it!

(And try to do so without having to win the lottery first)

 

[61653 HTAFC]

I will make sure of it!

(And try to do so without having to win the lottery first)

So it's a hope rather than any concrete plan then?

The problem with the Burscough curves (particularly the south to west one) is how any service would impact Merseyrail. On paper it seems like a no-brainer at first glance, but having to remove the buffers at Ormskirk and probably restore the second platform as a result, coupled with the scope of any proposed service (do you run through to Southport or simply connect at Burscough Bridge?) makes it way more complicated.
The other curve is probably simpler (though fitting a Preston to Southport service on the single line alongside the hourly Ormskirk would be tricky) and would potentially allow the Southport to Manchester services to run fast between Burscough and Southport or Meols Cop. With the new Preston service picking up the stops at the beetroot fields.

 

[Ediswan]

The original park after which Bush Hill Park station is named has been well and truly built on. The current recreation ground of the same name arrived 30 years after the station.

 

[Bevan Price]

I wonder whether any of the trees have survived at Newton-le-Willows?

Plenty of trees - there is a park within a couple of minutes walk from the station - though I don't know if there are still any willow trees.

 

[SargeNpton]

Colchester Town, now that it's a City?

 

[mikeg]

There is an FM radio transmitter in North Yorkshire called Woolmoor, near the village of Upsall. There used to be a Woolmoor village until sometime in the 19th century as far as I could research but it has since vanished long before the relay station was erected.

 

[najaB]

No ferries to be found at either Broughty Ferry nor Strome Ferry.

Though there was, for a brief period recently, a ferry again at the latter leading to the situation that you would follow this sign for the ferry:


Image is a picture from Flickr of a sign saying "Strome Ferry (No ferry)"

 

[duncanp]

Technically Mitcham Junction is not a junction any more, since the Wimbledon - West Croydon National Rail line was converted to Tramlink.

 

[WizCastro197]

Battersea Power Station (it's no longer a power station)

I am going to copy @AlterEgo (apologies) here, by also outlining it was a power station, at it is still exists, it is just decommissioned.

 

[weepingwillowb]

There's an electricity substation in Fenton, Stoke-on-Trent, which references the former Teddy Toy factory, which, before WW2, made toys, and then possibly switched to munitions manufacture during the war. The company closed circa 1948.

​

 

[AlterEgo]

Kelly’s Kitchen roundabout to the south of Milton Keynes references a restaurant that used to be there.

 

[duncanp]

Kelly’s Kitchen roundabout to the south of Milton Keynes references a restaurant that used to be there.

Same with the Crooked Billet roundabout at Walthamstow in London, referencing a long demolished pub.

 

[birchesgreen]

Near me is Norton junction (road one that is) which is named after a pub which was knocked down so long ago that the Lidl that replaced it has itself been torn down and replaced by a new building.

 

[weepingwillowb]

There's an Offal Pit Lane in Newton, near Frodsham, Cheshire; I don't suppose the offal pit is still there.

 

[Howardh]

Moses Gate intrigues me, if there ever was a gate it must have been some size to have a place name for it!

It appears to be derived from "Mosses crossing" and not a gate as such, so as neither seem to exist I submit it as an answer!

Someone will now provide a photograph of said crossing no doubt!

 

[prod_pep]

Old Roan station on Merseyside was named after the adjacent pub which, whilst just about still standing, is long closed and derelict.

 

[Basil Jet]

Same with the Crooked Billet roundabout at Walthamstow in London, referencing a long demolished pub.

ISTR it was demolished at a similar time to the "Cambridge" pub at what is still known as the Cambridge Roundabout (despite official signs referring to the "Great Cambridge Junction") further along the A406.

 

[Ediswan]

ISTR it was demolished at a similar time to the "Cambridge" pub at what is still known as the Cambridge Roundabout (despite official signs referring to the "Great Cambridge Junction") further along the A406.

The name is influenced by the A10 also being known as the "Great Cambridge Road".