Herne Hill Railway Station - History

History

The area now known as Herne Hill had been a rural part of the Manor of Milkwell since the 13th century. Two tributaries of the River Effra met at the undeveloped site of the future station; it was known as Island Green until the 18th century.

In 1783 a timber merchant, Samuel Sanders, bought Herne Hill from the Manor. Sanders granted leases for large plots of land to wealthy families – John Ruskin spent his childhood at an estate on Herne Hill. The Effra was covered over in the 1820s; and the area had become an upper-class suburb by the mid-19th century (a contemporary author referred to the hill as "the Elysium" for merchants). The opening of the railway station, which provided convenient and cheap access to central London, started the urbanisation of Herne Hill. All of the large estates were eventually cleared to make way for many smaller houses. An 1870 railway travel guide noted the population of Herne Hill was 701; the contemporaneous development of new residential streets would increase the population by 3,000.