Trivia - Stations named after people

[Mikey C]

There was a bloke at one place I worked called Colin Dale, so I knocked up for him a name-sign in the shape of an London Transport bar and roundel. He wasn't particularly amused.

Colin Dale

 

[stut]

Chandler's Ford was named after Raymond Chandler's Capri.
Maryport was named after Mary Portas, Queen of Shops.
Appleby was named after Kim Appleby, of Mel and Kim fame.
Partick was named after local character "dyslexic Paddy".
Durham was named as a homage to Henry Mancini, composer of the Pink Panther theme music.

 

[EbbwJunction1]

"Durham was named as a homage to Henry Mancini, composer of the Pink Panther theme music."

So good, they named it ..... how many times?

 

[bearhugger]

Marton, the next station along from James Cook, was originally called Ormesby. There is an urban village of Ormesby just down the road and there is also North Ormesby within Middlesbrough too. I think the 'by' part of the name must be viking for farm or village that belonged to Orme.
You can just about spot a statue / sculpture of Orme the viking near the first footbridge you go under on the Middlesbrough to Whitby line.

 

[Calthrop]

There have been in the past, also station names involving "Ormesby", in Norfolk. On the section (abandoned 1959) of the Midland & Great Northern Joint system between North Walsham and Yarmouth (Beach), there was the station of Great Ormesby; and immediately north of it, Little Ormesby Halt. Oddly, there seem to be per maps, no communities bearing those actual names: there are however in the immediate area, the villages -- a little way apart from each other -- of Ormesby St. Margaret and Ormesby St. Michael. Wiki doesn't suggest any particular derivation for those names; but one would guess that as with the Cleveland places in the preceding post, the origin would probably be the Norse male personal name -- from Old Norse ormr = serpent or dragon. Plenty of Norse influence, in these areas generally on the east coast.

The name shows up further west too; as in Ormskirk -- "Ormr / Orme's church" -- founded by a Norseman who converted to Christianity? And the Great and Little Ormes Head, close by Llandudno -- though suggestion is that those are so-called from fancied visual resemblance to a sea-serpent. At all events; one might feel inclined to say, "that Orme fellow certainly got around".

 

[Mcr Warrior]

And before the de Traffords, in early Norman times the land was in the ownership of Orme Fitz Seward, whose "tun" (dwelling) was the basis of the name of Urmston.

At all events; one might feel inclined to say, "that Orme fellow certainly got around".

As @Whisky Papa has already pointed out upthread in post #57, an Orme is also thought to be behind the derivation of the Urmston place name (near Manchester).

 

[Calthrop]

And likewise, I find, with Ormiston (East Lothian) -- once with a station on a small branch-line network; recently featuring, incidentally, on one of these forums' "Quizzes and Games". According to Wiki, name of this place "derived from a half-mythical Anglian settler called Ormr, meaning "serpent" or "snake".