How well do you know your bridges?

[whole diary]

[stuving]

10: Ramsgate viaduct.

Mark

Answers coming thick and fast - and (as I write) the others all look correct. But Ramsgate was not electrified until 1961/2, and clue included 1926

Aaaarrrgh. The London Bridge to Greenwich viaduct.

Mark

Or lots of others, for that matter. I suspect 10 is Catford Bridge. By name, perhaps ironically, as it's a station on an embankment, as opposed to Catford station which is a station on an embankment and also in part on a bridge.

[grahame]

Or lots of others, for that matter. I suspect 10 is Catford Bridge. By name, perhaps ironically, as it's a station on an embankment, as opposed to Catford station which is a station on an embankment and also in part on a bridge.

You clearly share my perverse sense of humour - yes, Catford Bridge it is.   I tried to research what the bridge was there that the station is named after, and drew a blank.  Famous as one of the few stations where you could NOT buy a ticket to any other station, as they did not sell ticket to Catford.

[eightonedee]

Can I clear the last ball off the metaphorical snooker table - no 9  - Battersea Bridge (I had to look it up!)

[PrestburyRoad]

You clearly share my perverse sense of humour - yes, Catford Bridge it is.   I tried to research what the bridge was there that the station is named after, and drew a blank.  Famous as one of the few stations where you could NOT buy a ticket to any other station, as they did not sell ticket to Catford.

There is a small bridge near to Catford Bridge station, where Stanstead Road crosses the River Ravensbourne, and the station is a little way out of the centre of Catford - hence perhaps the name to help people find it - at least it's close enough to Catford to not be called in GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) style as Catford Road.

Incidentally the Ravensbourne is emphatically not a major river, though it did cause enough flash flooding in the area in the 1970s to have considerable work done to improve its flow.

[froome]

You clearly share my perverse sense of humour - yes, Catford Bridge it is.   I tried to research what the bridge was there that the station is named after, and drew a blank.  Famous as one of the few stations where you could NOT buy a ticket to any other station, as they did not sell ticket to Catford.

There is a small bridge near to Catford Bridge station, where Stanstead Road crosses the River Ravensbourne, and the station is a little way out of the centre of Catford - hence perhaps the name to help people find it - at least it's close enough to Catford to not be called in GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) style as Catford Road.

Incidentally the Ravensbourne is emphatically not a major river, though it did cause enough flash flooding in the area in the 1970s to have considerable work done to improve its flow.

It certainly flooded badly in the early 1960s when our garden, close to one of its tributaries, was under 3 feet of water, which lapped around our back door. Clock House station, which was nearby, was also badly flooded.

[stuving]

"Catford Bridge, Lewisham" (also "near Sydenham") was a place name in use in the 1810s-40s, so before that railway was built. It was associated with Ravensbourne Park, which I guess was the big local estate but by then bits had been sold off for city gents to build big "country" houses . The other railway (through Catford) was built later still.

Catford didn't rate as a place in itself until later, so it was really named after the stations that were named after the bridge and the road that crossed it. There was a cluster of buildings around what's now Catford Broadway, but that was called Rushey Green.

As to whether the ford that was there before the bridge was named Catford on the same basis as Oxford ...  somehow I doubt it.

[Electric train]

No 10 - Three Bridges

[Mark A]

You clearly share my perverse sense of humour - yes, Catford Bridge it is.   I tried to research what the bridge was there that the station is named after, and drew a blank.  Famous as one of the few stations where you could NOT buy a ticket to any other station, as they did not sell ticket to Catford.

There is a small bridge near to Catford Bridge station, where Stanstead Road crosses the River Ravensbourne, and the station is a little way out of the centre of Catford - hence perhaps the name to help people find it - at least it's close enough to Catford to not be called in GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) style as Catford Road.

Incidentally the Ravensbourne is emphatically not a major river, though it did cause enough flash flooding in the area in the 1970s to have considerable work done to improve its flow.

Yes, the Catford Bridge there gave its name to the station. A schooldays geography teacher of mine lived in Catford and would have caught the train every day from one or other of those two stations.

maps.nls.uk has a georeferenced map dating from before the railways there, it's thin on detail and doesn't name the bridge, but later maps do just that - and then the name transferred to the composite bridge across both the Ravensbourne and the railway line. You can pull the slider to reveal the present day landscape - and then display the map once more, scroll around to find the lines that were being built at the time, and discover that, disappointingly, the surveyors didn't extend themselves to make a record of odd loops of the Croydon Canal, some of its route having just been usurped by the then-new rail line.

https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=17.5&lat=51.44440&lon=-0.02512&layers=250&b=1

Mark

[stuving]

maps.nls.uk has a georeferenced map dating from before the railways there, it's thin on detail and doesn't name the bridge, but later maps do just that - and then the name transferred to the composite bridge across both the Ravensbourne and the railway line. You can pull the slider to reveal the present day landscape - and then display the map once more, scroll around to find the lines that were being built at the time, and discover that, disappointingly, the surveyors didn't extend themselves to make a record of odd loops of the Croydon Canal, some of its route having just been usurped by the then-new rail line.

That map series was produced for the Metropolitan Commissioners of Sewers, to support their work, and subject to a lot of harassment from John Wyld (a mapmaker and MP^▸ (Member of Parliament)) who objected to the cost of detailed mapping. Thus it does have heights, public roads, and watercourses, but not much else - not even buildings. The Croydon Canal was by then largely dismantled, so its remnants weren't included except up past new Cross where it was still intact.

This is all documented by NLS; I didn't find that page via their own links, though I guess it must be possible.

[Mark A]

Wow, thanks for this, didn't find the background to that mapping on the maps site. Perhaps the canal at the time would have been a mixture of 'Obliterated' and 'Discarded'.

Mark

[Kempis]

Sloane Square may have had a bridge, but, more importantly, in my student days was notable for having a very acceptable bar on the clockwise platform.

The bar at Sloane Square station is featured in Iris Murdoch's novel A Word Child (1975), along with a similar bar on the tube platform at Liverpool Street: both are regular haunts of the main character. I remember wanting to visit them, but they'd already closed by the time I read the novel. There's an article about the history of bars on the London Underground in My London, including a photograph of the Sloane Square bar with the station cat.