Beckenham has a lost railway station. And it was called, naturally enough, “Penge”. The site of that station is also related to Beckenham’s only section of disused railway (if we’re not counting bits reused by the trams), called the Penge Loop.

The two are unconnected except by geography — they were built by different companies at different times for different purposes. Yet they share a similar name, a lack of use, and both are now almost forgotten.

Conventions

Whenever possible, modern station names are used to prevent confusion. A footnote will denote original names where necessary. Railway companies are mentioned in full once, with abbreviations, and then abbreviated thereafter.

Penge — A Brief History of a Brief Station

Penge Railway Station was short-lived and no trace of it survives today. It was built by the West End of London & Crystal Palace Railway (WEL&CPR) on a new line connecting their Crystal Palace station to Beckenham Junction. Both the line and the station opened on May 3rd 1858, but whilst the line stayed open the station closed on the 3rd of December 1860.

Researching the station can be tricky, for a few reasons:

It’s one of three stations that have been called Penge. The other two survive, as Penge West and Penge East — both seen as “Penge” on old maps and railway timetables, distinguished by suffixing the railway companies that operated them.^[1] (For simplicity’s sake, I will only refer to the other stations by their modern names from hereon.)
It was open for less than two years, and therefore had very little time to accrue much history.
Some local historians inaccurately referred to the station as “Beckenham Road” or “Birkbeck Halt”.
It was actually in Beckenham, not Penge^[2].

Fortunately, we do have the efforts of Andrew Hajducki, who wrote the excellent book “The Railways of Beckenham” — ISBN 978-1906419-59-2. He covers the station very well.

An Overview

Penge Railway Station seems to have been a case of “If you build it, they won’t come.”

Perhaps the first clue to the fate of this station should have been the total lack of almost anyone nearby when it was built. A later adjacent road attests to the nature of the area in 1858 — “Thayers Farm Road”. Yet when plans were approved by the WEL&CPR Board of Directors on 20th January 1858, there were no goods facilities or sidings for farm produce. (Both the nearby earlier Beckenham Junction station and the later Penge East station had goods yards and sidings.) To be fair the lack of sidings is probably explained by the railway being on an embankment at this point, but it certainly didn’t help the station to spur local development.

The Background and the Politics

The station was part of the WEL&CPR’s Farnborough Extension project — a multi-stage project to extend a line from its Crystal Palace station^[3] to join Farnborough, via Bromley. Only this initial stage was ever built. The line was to go from Crystal Palace to Penge Station, then on to Beckenham Junction and finally to Shortlands^[4].

Before the line could be extended from Shortlands the WEL&CPR’s line was sold to the East Kent Line, who were just about to rename themselves to the London, Chatham and Dover Railway (LCDR). Another company named the Mid Kent (Bromley & St Mary Cray) Railway was set up to extend the line down to St Mary’s Cray. This was unsurprisingly acquired later by the LCDR, as it provided part of the link between London and Chatham.

This is a simplified overview of a very confusing sequence of events, but it is basically manoeuvring between railway companies to create the potential for alternate lines on lucrative routes — a familiar railway story! The Farnborough extension itself was not desired so much because Farnborough was an in-demand location, but because it would be easier to extend further into Kent and on towards lucrative destinations on the coast. In the end the consolidation of railway companies rendered the need for a Farnborough extension redundant, the residents of Bromley Common protested, and the companies involved decided it wasn’t worth it now that they had a line towards Chatham. The Parliamentary powers were allowed to expire and it was never built.

Station Details

Penge station sat north of Beckenham Road, which the railway crossed via a girder bridge. The up side platform had a small wooden building with a clock, the down side platform was bare and accessed via stairs from the road. A stationmaster and a porter were to be employed to serve at the station.

A Board 0f Trade inspection before opening found that sloped ramps had not yet been provided for the platform ends, and that signal hands needed to be moved closer together. The station opened on time (May 3rd 1858) with the rest of the line, so these must have been done.

Due to a lack of use, the station was closed on the 3rd of December 1860.

The date of the demolition of the station is uncertain — maps show a structure until at least 1910, but written records seem to indicate that the station may have been demolished earlier than that.

Penge Station in History

Only two mentions of Penge station in non-railway historical archives have been found — the first is a story told by Walter Mathew in a letter to J. A. Bennett:

“In connection with [Penge station] I must tell you who was the first, and I might say the only passenger to use this station: he was not an Englishman, but in those far-off days a German, viz. Julius Kressman who lived in the High Street. He afterwards became Chairman of the first Beckenham School Board by reason of his knowledge of ‘Kultur’, I suppose.”

Ah, casual racism — it’s how we know old quotes are genuine!

Julius Kressman was probably not the only passenger, but no records exist of any tickets being sold at the station so it is hard to gauge traffic.

The second mention was in the Beckenham Journal — a local newspaper — published on 4th November 1911. In a discussion about the possibility of opening a new halt on the same site, it was mentioned that “at one time stood an old wooden building with a wooden platform which looked as if it might have been used as a small station in ancient days of the line.”

This seems a little odd — Andrew Hajducki points out that in 1911 the station would still have been within living memory. As we shall see, maps prove him right. However, if it had never been much used, then it seems quite possible that few, if any, remembered it.

All other stations on the Farnborough Extension of the WEL&CPR survive, except Penge^[5]. Sadly, no pictures are known to have ever been taken of the Penge railway station — but given its less than two years of existence, at a time when photography was rare, that is no surprise.

The Penge Loop

The astute observer of maps will notice that the 1894 maps and onwards showed an “old railway” or similar linking the two spurs of the London, Chatham and Dover railway. This link was just down from Kent House, before it goes over the Mid Kent Railway’s line^[6] and onwards to Beckenham Junction.

Why Build the Loop?

In 1865 the Crystal Palace & South London Junction Railway (CP&SLJR) opened a branch line from Nunhead to its new Crystal Palace High Level station. This service was initially operated on behalf of the CP&SLJR by LCDR, but relations between the companies rapidly deteriorated. The LCDR therefore wanted its own link to Crystal Palace from London. They realised that this could be accomplished by placing a small loop between its two existing lines in Beckenham. They even stated the possibility of re-opening the old Penge station to serve the new housing that was being developed in the area.

On the 16th of July 1874 Parliamentary approval was acquired, and work started in 1878. This considerable delay was mostly because the approval seemed to miraculously warm the relations between CP&SLJR and LCDR, and the loop no longer seemed to be needed. However as the approval would expire after five years if no work was undertaken, LCDR decided to hedge their bets and build the loop anyway.

Constructing the Penge Loop

Work on the loop started in the summer of 1878, and on 10th July 1879 the Board of Trade had inspected the line and approved its opening.

The loop was double-tracked on an embankment, with a girder bridge across the lane to the allotments. It also required new signal boxes at both the north and south ends of the loop. The work was not cheap — although only 16½ chains (332 meters, or 363 yards) it cost £11,000. This would be approximately £50,000 per mile. According to the Bank of England’s inflation calculator that works out at £1,286,189.47, or £6,430,947.37 per mile!

The Use of the Loop

The warmer relationship with the CP&SLJR meant that the loop was sadly not much used — it was very much an insurance policy.

When Kent House station opened in 1884 the loop was already disused — the points had been removed at the north junction, and some of the rails on the up line were missing. By 1886, the line had all been removed and the South signal box was also reported as removed.

On the 1st of July 1899 the loop gained new use — as a siding. A single line was relaid and empty carriages stabled there, but even this was temporary. With the electrification of the railway in 1925 the siding could no longer be used — nobody was going to spend money electrifying such a short and lightly used track — and the siding was removed. On the 11th September 1927 the deck and girders of the bridge were lifted, and the loop was no more.

The southern signal box still seems to appear on the 1930 OS 25 inch maps. I have entertained the notion that it could be the surviving Penge Station building, but it lacks the distinctive shape from some of the earlier maps. That having been said it’s in the same location, and previous maps clearly show the old station — so this building is very confusing.

The map also seems to show a fence at each end of the loop — presumably to stop any local children who clambered onto the disused loop from getting onto a real railway line?

The Loop Today

Today, the most visible remnant of the loop are the abutments of the bridge over the footpath to the allotments. You can still see the loop on aerial photographs, but both ends (near Kent House and at Beckenham Road Tram Stop) are overgrown to the point that there is no little to no sign of the Penge Loop remaining. This growth continues along the loop itself, such that when standing in the allotments it seems to be almost a natural feature rather than an artificial embankment.

Until recently, the remnants of the bridge were rather overgrown:

As this more recent photo (sadly from the west rather than the east, but of the same side of the bridge) shows it has recently been cleaned and trimmed quite significantly:

Unfortunately this has seen the removal of what looked to be old railway sleepers.

The Penge Loop remains to this day the only stretch of disused passenger railway in Beckenham, and is very much a folly to the ambitions and relationships of the London, Chatham and Dover Railway.

Still, at least no other railway companies ever had petty squabbles that saw them waste huge amounts of money, eh?

Beckenham Road Tram Stop

The site of Penge Railway station sees no further transport activity from 1927 until the 1940s. Bombs demolished houses and shops on the western side of the railway bridge, but the worst was yet to come — on 2nd August 1944 a V1 flying bomb landed on the east side, on a restaurant at lunchtime. 44 people died and much of the surrounding land was cleared by the force of the explosion.

Postwar rebuilding included road widening, and the area filled with commercial and office properties. In the 1960s the road under the bridge was excavated to allow double-decker buses under it, but at no point did anybody feel the need to rebuild Penge railway station. The nearby Kent House station provided a link to Victoria, and Clock House to London Bridge/Cannon Street/Charing Cross — all a revived Penge station could offer was a faster journey to Crystal Palace, which was already well served by bus with a stop right by the railway bridge.

In 1990 Croydon Council and London Regional Transport advanced a plan to bring trams back to Croydon — and this included a line to Beckenham Junction. In 1994 the bill received Royal Assent, and construction work on the Tramlink system started in 1995.

The Beckenham Junction tram line would leave the old abandoned Addiscombe railway line before its Elmers End terminus, and turn towards the old WEL&CPR line. The train line from Beckenham Junction to Crystal Palace had already been singled, but needed realignment to allow the trams to run alongside it. This new line would provide a number of tram stops, with one of them being Beckenham Road Tram Stop — on the site of the old Penge railway station.

On Tuesday 23rd of May 2000 at 12:02 in the afternoon the first public tram service^[7] departed Beckenham Junction. It takes around two minutes to travel to Beckenham Road Tram Stop.

Which means that at 12:04, for the first time since Monday 3rd December 1860, it was possible to take public transport from the site of the original Penge railway station. A wait of a mere 139 years, 5 months and 20 days.

The first tram was, inevitably, packed with tram and transport enthusiasts. So it may not have actually been possible to get on that first tram due to it being full. Sadly, we have no record of whether an inconceivably elderly “gentleman of German ‘Kultur’” was annoyed by this inconvenience.

Maps!

I do like a map, and they help to tell the story of the area. Of course, these are all screenshots taken whilst browsing the National Library of Scotland’s excellent maps facility.

Ordnance Survey Six-Inch map, surveyed in 1863 and published in 1870

https://maps.nls.uk/view/102343453

Here we see the rural nature of the area, even in 1863 — after the station had closed! A boundary and a small structure can be discerned, but not much else. Penge Loop is over a decade in the future.

I’ve added some coloured highlights to the map to make things a bit clearer:

The cyan area is roughly where the Penge station stood.

Highlighted in orange to the north is the location of Kent House railway station, which will open in 1884.

To the east, I’ve highlighted in green the Clock House farm building. This will, in 1890 as the area urbanises, lend its name to a new railway station (also highlighted in green).

To the west there’s a smattering of houses on Beckenham Road — although they are actually across the border in Penge. Otherwise, it’s all farmland and occasional brickworks^[8].

Ordnance Survey Six Inch Map, Revised 1894

https://maps.nls.uk/view/96805077

A mere 34 years after the closing of Penge railway station, and the area has changed dramatically. The old Clock House farm building and a gravel pit north of it are the only remaining signs of the rural idyll that once was. Clock House and Kent House stations are open, and no sign of the old disused Penge station. There may be, however, a signal box — more on that later.

Penge Loop has no tracks, with only its embankments and possibly the southern signal box shown. Or is it the old station? It looks too small for that…

Allotment gardens have sprung up, and the Kent House Pleasure Ground was exclusively for the use of the owners of houses to the west of it. Infrastructure isn’t limited to railways — schools serve young minds, and souls are served by a chapel, church and mission hall.

Ordnance Survey 25 Inch Map, Revised 1894

https://maps.nls.uk/view/101920002

It’s only on the 25 inch series of OS maps that we clearly see the station — shown here as a small building north of the road, and marked as “Station (Disused)”. The shape matches other station depictions, so it’s not likely to be a signal box. A small structure sits just west of it which is probably a disused signal box.

Penge Loop plainly still has a bridge despite having no tracks. A signal pole (S.P.) is shown further down the track towards Crystal Palace.

Ordnance Survey London 1:1,056 — 1895

This uses the same surveying information as the 1894 map, but was printed at a much higher resolution, and therefore allows us to see the most detailed expression of what remained of the station:

https://maps.nls.uk/view/101202810

The platform is clearly visible, as is an old signal box. We should contrast this with the newspaper comments in 1911. Sometime within those fifteen years, the newspaper behaves as though the building and any surviving platform remnants had been demolished.

Ordnance Survey 25 Inch Map, Revised 1910

https://maps.nls.uk/view/103675781

The “old signal box” has disappeared by this time, and the track is singled and acts as a siding — not connecting at the south. Little else has changed. This is just one year before the newspaper reports. Perhaps a large hedge obscured the view from the road?

Penge Loop now plainly has a single track and a fence in place at the southern end. There also appears to be a small structure just east of the bottom of Penge Loop — possibly disused signalling equipment? Or just a worker’s hut?

Ordnance Survey 25 Inch Map, Revised 1930

https://maps.nls.uk/view/103675778

By 1930, only an old signal box remains at the site. This lacks the same shape as the old railway building, yet is in roughly the same position.

Penge Loop now lacks any track. Strangely, just off this screenshot there still appears to be a bridge despite it being reported as dismantled in 1927. The odd southern structure also has a northern equivalent, lending credence to them being abandoned signalling structures.

Ordnance Survey 1:1250 Map, 1952

https://maps.nls.uk/view/102907600

Surveyed in March 1952, all railway buildings are now gone, leaving only an electrical substation and an electricity pole — the latter being rather an unusual thing in this urban area!

[1] Penge West was the first station in Penge, built by the London & Croydon Railway company and closed shortly afterwards due to lack of traffic. It was re-opened by later owners the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway, coincidentally on the same day (1st July 1863) that Penge East was opened. Competition in action! Penge East was built by the London, Chatham and Dover Railway. We narrowly avoided a fourth station named Penge — it was also the original proposed name for Clock House.

[2] To be fair, railway companies have poor form on this front. Beckenham Hill is not in Beckenham, and Penge East was technically in Beckenham parish when it was first built, although that’s more down to an odd spur of parish boundary that extends towards Crystal Palace than anything else.

[3] This is the low level station, not the later high level one.

[4] Shortlands was opened as “Bromley”, which is both a bald-faced lie and a source of confusion when researching the subject.

[5] “All other stations” is not a long list, so this is not much of an achievement. Using their modern names — Crystal Palace (Low Level), Beckenham Junction, Shortlands, Bromley South. Birkbeck was built much later, but takes the total to five. This was hardly an engineering project that would worry the Pharaohs…

[6] The Mid Kent Railway was bought by South Eastern Railway in 1864, and appears under that name on later maps. It should not be confused with the Mid Kent (Bromley & St Mary Cray) Railway, which was a different company.

[7] A VIP celebratory tram ran earlier that day, but as it wasn’t open to the public it doesn’t really count.

[8] This area is rich in London Clay, hence the many brickworks. The next station up from Kent House is Penge East, and between that and Sydenham hill there is a tunnel — the Sydenham Hill Rail Tunnel. This tunnel helps demonstrate the extent of local London Clay deposits…

Constructed in 1861, at its peak it had 2,000 people and 250 horses employed on it working both day and night. Its 200,000 cubic yards of clay spoil provided 29 million bricks, used not only in lining the tunnel but also to build the viaducts used to carry the northern sections of the railway over South London. Until the HS1 tunnel was built, the Sydenham Hill Rail Tunnel was the longest railway tunnel in London at 1.93 kilometers/1.2 miles. Being built in the Victorian era, nobody remembers this as the monumental engineering feat it plainly is, and today we simply take it for granted.