Morden tube station

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Morden
Location
Place	Morden
Local authority	Merton
Operations
Managed by	London Underground
Platforms in use	3
Transport for London
Zone	4
Annual entry/exit	5.493 million †
History
1926	Opened (C&SLR)
Transport for London List of London stations: Underground \| National Rail
† Data from Transport for London [1]
London Transport Portal

Morden station is a London Underground station in Morden in the London Borough of Merton. The station is the southern terminus for the Northern Line, is the most southerly station on the Underground and is in Travelcard Zone 4. The next station north is South Wimbledon. The station is located on London Road (A24).

1 History and Structure
2 Layout
3 Transport connections
4 External links

[edit] History and Structure

Morden station first came into use on 13 September 1926 with the opening of the new extension of the City & South London Railway from Clapham South. Morden in 1926 was a rural area and the station was built on open farmland giving its designer, Charles Holden, more space than had been available for the majority of the stations on the new extension. A parade of shops was incorporated into the design each side of the imposing station entrance and the structure was designed from the beginning with the intention of enabling upward development, however this did not come until the 1960s when an office building was added.

As the southern most point on the system, Morden station served from its beginning as the collection and departure point for numerous bus routes heading further into the depths of suburban south London and northern Surrey. In its early days it was a main starting point for buses heading to Epsom on Derby Day excursions and today many bus services start from the bus station in front of the station.

How Morden might have appeared on the London Underground Map today if the continuation of the Northern Line to Sutton had been built.

For a time before the extension to Morden was constructed, the Underground Group wanted to continue the line to Sutton using part of a surface route from Wimbledon to Sutton that had been planned by the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway (LB&SCR) and approved by Parliament in 1910 but which had never been constructed. This would have seen the line continue past its current depot and on to the alignment of the railway line close to Morden South station and then on to Sutton. The Southern Railway (SR, successor to the LB&SCR) which ran its trains to Sutton objected to this threat to its control of passenger traffic in the area and an agreement was reached by which the Underground Group built their line as far as Morden and the SR built the line from Wimbledon to Sutton; it opened it in January 1930.

It has been said that there was originally an arrow here to complement the archer statue at East Finchley station, and that this was stolen shortly after the station opened; however images of the station at its opening do not show this and East Finchley was not served by the Underground until 1939.

[edit] Layout

Unlike other stations on the southern branch of the Northern Line, Morden station is not constructed in tunnel but is built in a wide cutting with the tunnel portals a short distance to the north. The tunnel north of here has the distinction of being at the end (or the start) of one of the longest tunnels in the world (17.25 miles - about 28 km) running via the City between Morden and East Finchley.

Morden Depot is one of the three main depots on the Northern Line (The others are at Golders Green and Finchley) and is where most of the maintenance work is carried out. Trains reach the depot by continuing south through the station platforms and passing under the road.