Herne Hill () is a railway station in the Herne Hill district of the London Borough of Lambeth in South London. Situated down the line from London Victoria, it is a major junction between the Chatham Main Line, on which it is between Brixton and West Dulwich, and Thameslink, where it is between Loughborough Junction and Tulse Hill. The station is served by Thameslink services between St Albans City and Sutton and Southeastern services between London Victoria and Orpington, with extra services during the peak hours. It is located within London fare zones 2 and 3.
Herne Hill station was first opened on 25 August 1862 by the London, Chatham and Dover Railway (LCDR) as the southern terminus of the line to London Victoria, which opened on the same date. It became a through-station on 1 July 1863 when services began continuing to Beckenham Junction, and the same month trains were continuing down the LCDR to Dover, where passengers could transfer to a ferry to Calais. By this time, the City Branch had already opened, and when the Snow Hill tunnel opened services could continue through Central London, with the Great Northern Railway running services from Hatfield in Hertfordshire to Herne Hill between 1866 and 1868.
By 1869 the London and South Western Railway (LSWR) had built their railway to Tulse Hill and a connection to Herne Hill which allowed them to use services via the station to connect to Central London. From 1885 the Herne Hill Sidings were built as a marshalling yard for goods trains heading for Blackfriars, one of the first yards of its kind in the United Kingdom. From 1899 the LCDR and South Eastern Railway operated services jointly as the South Eastern and Chatham Railway, before being amalgamated alongside other companies into the Southern Railway (SR) from 1923. The SR electrified the line through Herne Hill, first with overhead wires in 1925 and then with the third-rail system instead from 1926. Colour-light signalling replaced semaphores as part of a wider regional upgrade in 1959.
The sidings at the station were closed in 1966, but restored in 2009 as part of the Thameslink Programme when the end of Thameslink services to Moorgate created the need for extra sidings. Other upgrades, such as the provision of step-free access, were implemented in the late 2000s. The flat junctions on either side of the station create a major capacity constraint, and the grade separation of the station has been discussed, including as part of the Thameslink Programme, but it has never materialised. Proposals to extend the London Overground and London Underground to the station have also been considered but not pursued by Transport for London.
Design
Station design
The station was designed by architect John Taylor and railway engineers Joseph Cubitt and J.T. Turner, and was built in Gothic Revival and polychrome styles. The station was designed to impress its passengers, with tea rooms offering buffets, decorative brickwork, and a tower which also served the practical function of concealing the water tank for the steam locomotives. The station made use of London stock brick and was in a style that became known as "Chatham Gothic" because of its use by the London, Chatham, and Dover Railway (LCDR) in the local area.
The design of the station was highly praised at the time: in 1863, The Building News described it as "spacious and convenient [...] and of the very best quality", and wrote that "an unusual amount of decorative taste has been displayed" in the station's construction. The neighbouring viaduct was praised as "one of the most ornamental pieces of work we have ever seen attempted on a railway" for its fine brickwork. The station's design prompted the journal to write a 2,000-word editorial bemoaning the comparatively poor architectural quality of other contemporaneous civil engineering projects. An architectural critic later noted the station was "eulogised" by journals upon its opening and that its architecture was still seen as exemplary at the end of the 19th century.
The upper floor of the station, which had not been used by passengers since 1925, was converted into of office space in 1991 and rented as 'Tower House' (after the station's distinctive tower). The station building houses a ticket office and newsagent, and it was made a Grade II listed structure in 1998; the listing notes the station's arched doorways, Welsh slate roof—which replaced the original clay roof tiles—and decorative brickwork. The viaduct and station together were described by Cherry and Pevsner as a "handsome group", and featured on the cover of a book about London's railway architecture.
The station entrance canopy was shortened and altered in the mid-20th century. It was then removed and replaced by Network Rail due to its being in a state of disrepair; the new canopy has a timber valance design and cornice based on the original LCDR canopy, as opposed to the reduced 20th century version. In 2019, a room on the first floor of the station building, which formerly served as the waiting room, was renovated and opened as a public space with funding from the Mayor of London.
Track layout The Chatham Main Line and Sutton Loop railway lines through Herne Hill are elevated above road level on a brick viaduct that runs north–south. The four tracks are served by two island platforms, the westerly platform numbered 1 and 2 and the easterly platform numbered 3 and 4; northbound trains call at platforms 1/2 and southbound trains at 3/4, providing cross-platform interchange between the two routes. The speed limit through the station is on platform 1 and on platforms 2–4, but upon passing all four platforms the speed limit immediately lowers due to the junctions either side.
There are flat junctions at each end of the station: Herne Hill North Junction, where the lines to Loughborough Junction and Brixton diverge; and Herne Hill South Junction, where the lines to West Dulwich and Tulse Hill diverge. Thameslink and Southeastern services cross each other's paths at the junctions, constraining capacity on both routes. The station also has a turnback siding on its eastern side, adjacent to Milkwood Road; trains using this siding can only access the branch to Loughborough Junction..
History
1852–1862: Background and construction The first proposal for a railway line through Herne Hill was drawn up in 1852 by the Mid Kent and London and South Western Junction Railways Company. No construction work was ever undertaken and the company had ceased to exist by 1860. In the late 1850s, the East Kent Railway (EKR) had ambitions to run passenger trains between Kent and London, but it did not own any railway lines in inner London. It reached an agreement with the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway (LB&SCR) in 1858, in which the EKR would use the LB&SCR's West End and Crystal Palace line to access Battersea and from 1860, its planned terminus at London Victoria. This arrangement incurred the EKR costly access fees, but was necessary because the company had no Parliamentary authority to build in London.
On 6 August 1860, the Metropolitan Extensions Act granted the EKR's successor—the London, Chatham and Dover Railway (LCDR)—the powers to build a line from Herne Hill to ; as well as this line, branches to Beckenham Junction () and to Battersea (), the latter of which allowed connection with the planned terminus at London Victoria—were permitted. The route from Beckenham Junction to Battersea closely resembled that of the 1852 proposal, going via Clapham, Brixton, Herne Hill, Dulwich and Sydenham. The land for the station at Herne Hill was compulsorily purchased from the estate of Thomas Vyse, a manufacturer of straw hats and owner of Herne Hill Abbey, an estate at 70 Herne Hill; the station and much of the viaduct were then built on part of the Abbey's grounds.
To coincide with the delayed opening of its grand terminus at London Victoria, the section of line from Herne Hill via Stewarts Lane and opened on 25 August 1862, with Herne Hill opening on the same date. A new road, named Station Road, was built between the junction of Norwood Road and Half Moon Lane, Herne Hill's main thoroughfare, and the station. There were initially only two platforms, one for each direction of travel. The station's original signal box was situated at the road junction between Norwood Road and Half Moon Lane, and was elevated to the height of the viaduct.
1863–1869: Early operation
The line from Beckenham Junction reached Herne Hill from the south on 1 July 1863, connecting the station to the LCDR's lines in Kent, and finally allowing the LCDR to avoid using the LB&SCR's tracks to access Victoria from Kent. From July 1863, LCDR trains between Victoria and Kent ran through Herne Hill, and continued to continental Europe via a connecting steamboat from Dover Harbour to Calais; these boat trains left Victoria and Ludgate Hill simultaneously and were joined at Herne Hill. Express journeys from Herne Hill to Dover, a distance of , took 1 hour 36 minutes, at an average speed of . London-bound services doubled—and southbound services halved—in length at Herne Hill, which meant that more capacity could be added for the London section that was not needed further down the line.
In 1865, the LCDR developed a proposal for a line from Herne Hill to nearby Epsom; however, the LB&SCR had bought the line between Sutton and Epsom Downs the same year and were running through trains, so the LCDR had to give up on the idea. On 6 October 1862, the City Branch opened from Herne Hill as far as , via and ; the line reached Blackfriars on 1 June 1864, and the LCDR began operating direct services to King's Cross and Barnet (now High Barnet Underground station) from Herne Hill when the Snow Hill tunnel opened. As the Blackfriars Goods Depot was too small to handle the LCDR's traffic, a marshalling yard was built between Herne Hill and Loughborough Junction in order to put together the trains that would then be processed further up the line at Blackfriars; Roger Kidner questions whether these sidings were the first of their kind to be built, with Henry Patrick White calling them "one of the first of such yards in the country".
From 27 February 1865, the LCDR ran a workmen's train, whose tickets cost 1d per journey (), which ran twice daily between Ludgate Hill and Victoria via Herne Hill. The train left Ludgate Hill at 04:55 and arrived at Victoria around 06:00, and then left Victoria at 18:15. The LCDR were forced to run the service by clause 142 of the Metropolitan Extensions Act of 1860 that had let them build the line from Herne Hill in the first place, because Parliament thought that the construction of the line would displace a large number of people from the Camberwell area and that they ought to be considered; the LCDR's shareholders argued whether the moral bonus of being the operator of such a service outweighed the financial cost of its losses.
The Great Northern Railway (GNR) had contributed £320,000 to the Metropolitan Extensions (), and the London and South Western Railway (LSWR) had contributed £310,000 (); they had done this in return for the right to use the City Line themselves to run services. The GNR ran trains between Hatfield and Herne Hill from August 1866 until 1 March 1868, when those trains instead began running to Victoria via the new curve at Loughborough Junction. The service was busy, with 15 trains leaving Hatfield and 14 leaving Herne Hill every day, and the train calling at all stations.