Genealogy Chat

hope you find this useful/interesting, see below

This is from a book called London: a social history, by Roy Porter. The skeleton of London railways: London's first railway ran from Bricklayer's Arms, Southwark [pub later run by husband's gt gt gt grandfather] to Deptford starting Dec 1836 and soon extended to London Bridge & Greenwich. London & Croydon opened 1839, London & Brighton in 1841. Greenwich line became the South Eastern Railway and the others became part of London, Brighton & South Coast Railway and they all terminated at London Bridge. London & Birmingham Railway opened at Euston in 1837, London & South Western ran from Nine Elms to Waterloo in 1848. Blackwall Railway ran from Blackwall to the Minories [near the Tower of London] in 1841 and went to Fenchurch St the following year. Eastern Counties Railway [later Great Eastern] went from Mile End to Shoreditch in 1840 and to Liverpool St in 1874. In 1853 the North London Railway linked the western suburbs with the docks; a spur ran from Dalston to Broad St in the City. London termini Paddington 1838 King's Cross 1852 St Pancras 1868 Short history of commuting To start with, railways didn't think of commuter traffic, so the first stop on the London-Birmingham line was Harrow, 11 miles from Euston. They were targeting long-distance traffic. Visionaries deplored the fragmentary termini with no linking structure, but London aristocratic landowners wanted to keep railways away from their property. In 1850s there were about 27,000 daily commuters to London, a 10th of the number who travelled by foot or omnibus. Various railway bridges were built across London as the companies competitively grew - this had a serious effect on housing. Working-class homes were demolished to make way for the railway and overall between 1850-1900 about 1000,000 people wrere made homeless. The railway companies were not obliged to rehouse them, but as many lived near their work they were forced into existing homes and created greater over-crowding. Suburbia As stations shot up away from the city centre, 3 and 4 storey houses were built for families with maids. The area then attracted cheaper 2 to 3-storey terraced housing for less affluent commuters, like policemen, firemen, railway engineers or gasworks gaffers, who had secure incomes with which to rent or buy. The more affluent classes then moved to stations further out as the railways developed. In the 1880s the highest rates of population increase in the nation were working & lower-middle class suburbs around the railways - Leyton, Willesden, Tottenham and West Ham. The first garden suburb, designed by Norman Shaw, was Bedford Park, near Turnham Green in 1877. From the 1870s the railways then enabled the working class suburbs, with the 1864 CHEAP TRAINS ACT. The London, Chatham & Dover Railway had to run one train from Peckham Junction to Ludgate hill before 7am and return before 6pm for 1d. London, Brighton & South Coast had to do a daily journey cheaply between New Cross & Liverpool Street, from 1868 there were workmen's tickets on the Woolwich line; from 1872 there was a service between bethnal Green to Stoke Newington. By 1882 25,000 workmen's tickets were sold daily. This encouraged builders to provide cheaper housing in less desirable districts. For the middle classes, the first garden suburb, designed by Norman Shaw, was Bedford Park, near Turnham Green in 1877. nell

Little Nell, Many thanks for this piece. It makes my G. G. grand parents move from Kent to Bolton Lancs in 1837/38, with a small child and another on the way, seem even more of a hazadous expedition. They would presumably have had only road transport such as Stage Coaches on which to travel. They really must have been desperate to escape the poverty of rural life. Many of the men in the family worked on the railways and one became the Station Master at Hebden Bridge. Rosemary(Essex)

Thanks Nell - thats interesting, explains my lots 'migration' to West Ham district to some extent !