Plumstead Station

 

 I thought it was about time I got back some of the railway stations in the Borough.  The last one I did was Woolwich Arsenal so logically I now ought to do Plumstead but I’ve been rather avoiding it because I know that it’s quite a complicated story for one thing and for the other Plumstead has got lots of devoted local users.  All of whom might be a bit upset at an upstart like me from Blackheath writing about their station.  Sorry, but I look forward to your criticizing me and hopefully putting it on my Maryswrite Blog which where it will appear in a couple of weeks time

So Plumstead Station:  it opened in June between Abbey Wood and Woolwich Arsenal stations.  Earlier in April there had been an official ceremony of laying the foundation stone’ - attended by officials of the company and ‘influential residents of the district’.   I’m intrigued by this report. Is there actually a foundation stone? Does anybody know anything about it?  And if no one does should we start looking for it?

The station was built on the North Kent Line which had opened ten years earlier in 1849 . Greenwich  Industrial History Society Members and friends should be very up to date with the history of the line since only a couple of weeks ago we had  a speaker , Richard Allen, talking about the line in a great deal of detail with lots of amazing pictures.

Plumstead Station opened in response to the huge 19th population increase in the area. It was near to the Royal Arsenal and an ideal stop for the factory workers. At this time the Arsenal was taking on vast numbers of new workers –numbers which  peaked in the Great War.

To those who had only ever seen the station from street level it would seem to be a small and unobtrusive little station.  The main building would have seemed fairly modest -  single-storey with a tall pitched roof, some fancy brickwork and tall chimney stacks.  But once on the station itself it is very different. The actual platforms and the operative part of the station are down below in a cutting and the single storey street level building is in fact the top story of a three storey station. The station did not follow the designs of those stations already built on the line.

Down on the platforms the buildings at platform level had a trackside façade with three arches, which look like a viaduct, and behind them was a waiting room and offices . It is a design was unique to Plumstead.

Most stations have a canopy to protect passengers from the elements, amd Plumstead has an intricate canopy with valances like Dartford station. To have this facility in the main building of a station was unusual on the North Kent line and unique to Plumstead

Nevertheless it attracted its share of grumblers and a letter from a Mr Sadler of Macoma Road , who wrote to the press in 1909 to draw attention to features which the station needed but did not have – he included the need for a booking facility on the bridge,  ‘way in’ and ‘way out’ signs for each platform,  to be available at all times; waiting rooms and toilets for both sexes upon both platforms; ticket offices for first,  second and third class passages; all trains which ended their journeys at Woolwich to run on to Plumstead.  He had sent a copy of these demands to every member of Plumstອad Vestry.  A shorter list came from a  Mr Wright of Alliance Road, Plumstead who wrote in 1956 aA letter taking up an entire column in the local newspaper about the problems of the  station clock.

 

 At first there was no footbridge, and  passengers had to cross the line via the road but a  lattice footbridge was installed in 1894 and had a roof over it. In the 2000s the rail  authority decided to remove the footbridge and there were arguments about a proposed lift and altering the various unique features.  Resident groups wrote “Access for all London Stations, especially Plumstead , is welcome however not at any cost. Network Rail proposes installing an “off the peg” footbridge and lift shafts, directly from the station building. This will mean demolishing the historic bridge and replacing it with a massive modern box structure.”

Originally the station had three platforms – the additional one being an up-line facing bay platform connected to sidings and including a water tower and crane. This was removed in 1926 when the line was electrified  with just the tower and crane  left while a wooden waiting shelter was erected there.  In the 1960s this shelter was removed along with the footbridge roof.

A signal box opened in 1892 at the western end of the platforms builft in the South Eastern Railways inhouse design.  It closed in 1926.

The ‘Hole in the Wall’ was the name given to sidings added I 1859 north of Plumstead Station on the down side the railway which linked to the Royal Arsenal complex. There were also nine goods sidings beyond the road bridge east of the station and a single-track connection from these goods sidings went into the Arsenal for military trains of guns, ammunition and, indeed, new locomotive parts. This had all been originally made in 1824 for a horse drawn tramway and inside the Arsenal was a huge complex of light and heavy rail lines and systems. The single-track connection with the Arsenal was taken out of use in 1967, after the military site had been severely degraded. but some of the sidings  were later electrified.

These goods sidings allowed military trains of guns, ammunition and, new locomotive parts to access the Arsenal from the main line. After the Great War a number of the Arsenal’s munitions factories became surplus to requirements, but to avoid widespread redundancies in the area, it was decided to build fifty steam engines there. Eventually, the Arsenal factories manufactured the components for these locomotives, but they were  transported down to Ashford works for assembly.

The sidings to the east of the station have survived surprisingly well but by the mid-1990s their usage for freight traffic was virtually non-existent. But the electrified sidings whicg were retained are still in use for storage of rolling stock and more recently by Crossrail.

The station is  located at the western end of the ‘Ridgeway’ pedestrian and cycle path which runs on top of the Southern Outfall sewer and ends up at the Crossness Sewage Works -  including, of course, Crossness Engines Museum,

Local people have been very concerned that the station is kept as nesr its original format as oposible and that it also provides accessibility =-  ‘Save Our Station History!.  .....  accessibility is a good thing! Destroying local history and ignoring the local community is not! “

They continued saying that Network Rail’s plan would  mean damage to features  dating from 1892 -the demolition of the iron lattice footbridge, the removal and replacement of the attractive brick steps, damage to the section of the building, removal of part of a canopy and removal of a crenellated section of the original 1859 station.

They  claimed that Network Rail had  coerced the Area Planning Committee into accepting its ‘lazy, one size fits all proposal, by using emotional blackmail, ignoring requests and reneging on promises.’

 

Latest news is that the bridge will  be kept  but clearly residents will continue to fight to keep this attractive station with its unique features