And welcome to Nunhead.
Across the road from me is the current day station entrance,
but the original Nunhead Station is now where
this garden centre is here.
And from this point, over a hundred years ago,
there was a railway line that went all the way
to Greenwich, Greenwich Park Station.
which is what we're gonna walk today
in episode seven of London's Lost Railways.
The branch line to Greenwich,
also known as the Lewisham line,
was a short section of railway that came off at Nunhead
and went up and terminated at Greenwich Park Station.
It opened in 1888 with four stations in total,
but was another casualty of the first world war,
with it being first closed to passengers in 1917
and then abandoned completely by 1926.
But a small section of the branch was brought back
into use in 1929, with a new curve so that the railway
from Nunhead could link up to the railway at Lewisham.
We'll see that later coming up in the video.
Time to go for a walk though
and see what is still out there of the old railway.
The first place to walk to
is the modern day Brockley Station.
The line east of Nunhead goes over the overground here
on a bridge and that's where Brockley Lane Station
used to be.
In fact, the platforms were mostly on this bridge
above the road and on the pavement of the road side
is an old set of concrete steps.
This was the entrance to the old station.
If you peer through the fence,
you can see the point where on one side,
steps would have led up to the eastbound platform
and where there is still an underpass that goes
under the railway for passengers to walk through,
which would have led to steps to take you up
to the westbound platform.
The modern Brockley Station has a community garden outside
and if you go into this, there are actually still some steps
which lead up to the track side,
but that's just most likely
a modern day access point for maintenance.
So then it's time to walk the streets of Lewisham,
noting that they have some side roads here
with excellent names.
And you come out onto the main road.
The main road, by the way, that has this old red phone box
that is now a library.
And that road in fact is now the point
where Lewisham Way meets Loampit Hill.
And that is the location of Lewisham Road Station.
Nowadays it's called Aladdin's Cave,
a second hand shop and salvage yard, a curio in itself.
But the Station building is still here
albeit somewhat crumbling and falling apart.
And a peek over the side of the bridge and you can see down
to the point where the edge of the platforms once were.
It's also here from the bridge that you can see
the railway line curving around to the right
heading towards Lewisham itself.
But imagine here the tracks that carried on
to Greenwich Park were perfectly straight
and they head towards Blackheath Hill,
which is where we're heading next.
(train clatters)
To get there, you have to negotiate your way
over the bridge by the DLR at Elverson Road
and then head for the main road that is Blackheath Hill
and that's the same name as the old station.
Now on Google 3D view, you can see that the exact spot
where the station was, down in a cutting,
has been infilled and is now where Robinscroft Mews are.
However, pop round to the front for the location
of the station building and there's something brilliant
hidden in plain sight.
The imprint of the old station building is still
very much visible on the side of the structure next to it.
But during the second world war in the 1940s,
the old station was converted into an air raid shelter
called Blackheath Hill Shelter
and just off of Lindsell Street, you can quite easily find
the spot on the surface today, which is the entrance.
These red doors here is an entrance that takes you
down some steps to the old station
and what was used as the shelter during the war.
And on to our next place where you can see
the old alignment, which is at Prior Street.
Now a lot of the railways in this heavily built-up,
urban setting were in cuttings, just like this.
This is part of the railway that still runs today
that gives you an idea of what it would have looked like.
So when this old railway became abandoned,
the cuttings were filled in and used by other things.
In this case, an allotment,
which you can get a much better view of
if you look from above on Google Maps.
On the street it's just an innocuous wall to peer over
but here's where it was.
(birds chirping)
And on to our final stop, Greenwich Park Station,
of which sadly nothing at all survives.
When you find Burney Street, walk down it
and you get to Burney Street Car Park
and that has been built right on the location
of the old station.
And so this is the Burney Street Car Park,
the site of Greenwich Park Station.
Would have had a goods yard as well,
but this whole car park, this area is exactly
where it would have been.
There's a hotel now out front on the main road,
that would have been the front of the station.
And there is nothing, zero, nada, zilch
left here to see of the old station.
But the other stations, there were a few things to see,
a few clues, which I think is nice
for a line that was abandoned over 100 years ago.
If you know where to look and if you look closely enough
you can still see a few lost railways of London.
There is a playlist coming up with all the videos
in this series, if you're enjoying it.
Thanks for watching. Please press subscribe.
See you next time.