"White Hart Lane" to become "Tottenham Hotspur" Station

[whole diary]

[TonyK]

There already is an Arsenal station, renamed for the club way back in the 1930s, and I believe something similar with Manchester Untied. Station names should be a useful indication to travellers of where the station is, which doesn't have to be geographical. They should also be reasonably distinct; I'm not sure of the risk of confusion between Tottenham Hotspur and Tottenham Hale vs Arsenal and Woolwich Arsenal?

But there are questions around the "corporatisation" of supposedly public space, especially as in this case there's some unclarity whether the club have actually paid what was agreed.

Manchester United Football Club is indeed a railway station, mnemonic MUF. It is on the line between Manchester Piccadilly and Liverpool Lime Street (where else?) and is only open on match days. I have used it only once, catching what must have been a 12-car train back to Piccadilly. The nearby tram stop is called Old Trafford, but then it does serve the cricket ground too, which has gates right behind the inbound platform. To get to the football ground, you walk along Brian Statham Way (brilliant seam bowler for Lancashire and England) until John Gilbert Way (canal visionary), then onto Sir Matt Busby Way (google it if you don't know).

On the blue side of Manchester, the club paid a lot of money - I think a sum not unadjacent to £4 million - to change the name of Sportcity Stadium tram stop to Etihad Campus, after the stop had been built and finished, but before it opened. I'm not knocking them for that, as I am flying to Abu Dhabi with the airline next week.

The trend to name airports after local celebrities is a bit naff, except possibly Charles de Gaulle or my personal favourite General Bernardo O'Higgins*, but there was one story from when Liverpool FC^‡(resolve) was in dire straits towards the end of Roy Hodgson's tenure as manager. There is a statue of the eponymous mop-top at Liverpool John Lennon Airport, bearing the legend from his famous song "Imagine" of "Above us only sky". Below which some wag put a placard saying "Below us only Wolverhampton Wanderers and West Ham United".

Dangerous, though, to name anything after an individual. It cost a lot of money to rename every road, street, footpath etc (formerly) having Jimmy Savile's name in the title.

*Sadly, I arrived at Aeropuerto Internacional Arturo Merino Benítez, of whom, despite his obvious aviation links, I am not as big a fan.

[grahame]

So the convention is that any such named station must be under perceived threat of closure then, eh?

I've had a think as to why a higher proposition of such stations end up being notable for painfully low traffic.

Public railways last a long time. "Beeching" cuts were of lines and stations that had made or almost made their centenary, and look at the majority today, you'll find they've been around a while.  Dilton Marsh is the most recent opening of a station on a new site in Wiltshire - at 1937.

Companies come and go.  Now - for best rail comparison we're looking at big companies ... and I found a piece from 2017 telling me that of 100 companies in the original FTSE 100 in 1984, only 28 remain there today in a similar form.

So - as the waves of company operation flow and ebb, with works specific stations named after the industry, chances are that they're both the newer stations in railway terms, and the ones left behind as business moves on.  It's painfully slow to close a station or line (and show it should be, bearing in mind the enormity of the task of putting it back later) so you have your IBMs and your British Steels ... and one hopes with the sustainable intent to redevelop brownfield sites these day that their use will grow in the future - perhaps called Chrisswell for Braeside, and Dormanstown. You have the transport, you have the site - where better to put your new homes and next generation businesses?

The works halt which does a useful job for a number of / many years but then finds its function gone is not new:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampress_Works_Halt_railway_station

Ampress Works Halt was a halt station on the Lymington Branch Line which, between 1956 and 1989, served the Wellworthy engineering works near Lymington in Hampshire, England. Sited near the bridge over the A337 Lymington to Brockenhurst road, the station closed when the engineering works ceased operation. The station never appeared in any public timetable.

http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/s/scotswood_works_halt/

Notes: The halt was about 700yd east of Scotswood station, opened in World War I for workers at Armstrong Whitworth’s munitions factory. It was built at that company’s expense following an Agreement with the NER of 25 August 1915.

[snip]

The Agreement with the NER to operate the halt expired at the close of World War I, but Armstrong Whitworth requested its retention, subject to one month’s notice of discontinuation by themselves or the NER. The workforce declined, and Armstrong Whitworth approached the LNER^» (London North Eastern Railway - about) (successor to the NER) to end the service on 27 September 1924.

The halt closed, but reopened from 1940-44, again serving munitions workers. It was eventually demolished in 1948.

That latter is also of great interest as it's an example of a station that was closed for 16 years and re-opened as requirements changed.

[grahame]

I suppose you shouldnt knock it until you've tried it.

MenheniOat So Simple or Holsten Pilning anyone?

There may be a more obvious but less punny company name.


Not a classic "Company Station" though, if the station were to be resited on the B4055:
1. Tesco traffic
2. Park and Ride as there's a new motorway junction going in on the M49 - access not through Pilining Village
3. Local foot and cycle traffic as the new station location is convenient for that traffic

Which means that when Tesco moves on in 20 years, you'll still have pretty significant traffic at that station.

[Bmblbzzz]

The trend to name airports after local celebrities is a bit naff, except possibly Charles de Gaulle or my personal favourite General Bernardo O'Higgins*, but there was one story from when Liverpool FC^‡(resolve) was in dire straits towards the end of Roy Hodgson's tenure as manager. There is a statue of the eponymous mop-top at Liverpool John Lennon Airport, bearing the legend from his famous song "Imagine" of "Above us only sky". Below which some wag put a placard saying "Below us only Wolverhampton Wanderers and West Ham United".

Dangerous, though, to name anything after an individual. It cost a lot of money to rename every road, street, footpath etc (formerly) having Jimmy Savile's name in the title.

I agree with both bits of this. In Bristol right now we've got the well know controversy about Colston (while various other slave traders who never endowed schools etc but have streets and parks named after them go unmentioned), but more dramatically I can think of roads in Poland (where I lived for a while) which in the space of less than a century were named after a tsar, a Polish writer, Hitler, Lenin, a pre-war Polish politician, then Pope John Paul II.  Each name a hostage to future political fortune.

So while it seems John Lennon is an uncontroversial choice, who knows what might be discovered (or deemed worthy of controversy) in the future?

Sir Matt Busby Way (google it if you don't know).

Was he the inventor of the bearskin hat? 

[TonyK]

Tesco celebrates its centenary this year. Who knows? It could make it to 200 before we are all fed with synthetic tofu delivered by drone.

[TonyK]

I agree with both bits of this. In Bristol right now we've got the well know controversy about Colston (while various other slave traders who never endowed schools etc but have streets and parks named after them go unmentioned), but more dramatically I can think of roads in Poland (where I lived for a while) which in the space of less than a century were named after a tsar, a Polish writer, Hitler, Lenin, a pre-war Polish politician, then Pope John Paul II.  Each name a hostage to future political fortune.

Why not George Ringo, too? Excellent name for an inner-city orbital road.

Sir Matt Busby Way (google it if you don't know).

Was he the inventor of the bearskin hat? 

Yes. Not the shiny one, obviously.

[Bmblbzzz]

Not Ringo. He's already got a potato-based snack named after him.

[eightonedee]

The other way around, so to speak - please, please, please can they rename the long-awaited new station south of Reading from "Green Park" as "Mad Stad" !

PS - Update - further extension of time for decision on planning application granted to today to enable drainage issues to be resolved......

[Phantom]

If Ashton Gate station is reopened on the Portishead line (so that's two big ifs), should/would it be renamed 'Bristol City'? My answer is no.

Much simpler reasoning, Ashton Gate is no longer just the home of Bristol City FC^‡(resolve), it is now shared with Bristol RFC.
When the new sports arena opens there will also be the basketball team based there too

As for the original topic that's a simple reason too, the ground is no longer "White Hart Lane" it is now known as the "Tottenham Hotspur Stadium"