Station name word order - Croydon

[norbitonflyer]

They are correctly(-ish) named for their orientation (no pun intended) in relation to Hampton though...

Which Hampton though? Not Hampton-in-Arden

And you would have to travel a long way east from any of them to get to Easthampton

Location Map.

Location map of easthampton.

www.streetmap.co.uk

 

[Rescars]

Which Hampton though? Not Hampton-in-Arden

And you would have to travel a long way east from any of them to get to Easthampton

Location Map.

Location map of easthampton.

www.streetmap.co.uk

At least these are all full-size Hamptons, unlike Littlehampton!

 

[Thebaz]

Never mind sleepy Bedhampton!

 

[nw1]

And you would have to travel a long way east from any of them to get to Easthampton

A long way west, presumably, as Easthampton appears to be a long way west (somewhere near Leominster), ironically enough.

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Which Hampton though? Not Hampton-in-Arden

I guess your local one?

 

[Dr_Paul]

It was the location of the Central Offices of the dock company, being halfway along the Albert Dock. Surprisingly the two large 1883 buildings are still there, having somehow survived the WW2 bombing destruction of all around, and are now Listed. One was the Central Administration Building, alias the Dock Manager's House, for all the Royal Docks, and its neighbour is the Central Buffet, main canteen for the docks. The dock company owned the rail line, it was not the GER, so they used their own terms for the station names.

Mystery solved! I didn't know that about Central station. It makes sense now.

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Hampton can have three origins: from ham-tun, meaning home farm or homestead; from hamm + tun, meaning farmstead in an enclosure or river bend; or from heah + tun, meaning high farm. Northampton comes from the first and Southampton is a variant of the second, it being an estate on a promontory. The need to differentiate between the two most important of the many Hamptons (I am sure that there are several mildly vulgar jokes floating around) seems to have become necessary once Mercia and contiguous areas became subordinate to Wessex.

Main source: Dictionary of English Place-Names (Mills, Oxford, 1998).

'... from hamm + tun...' — Hampton is one of those names where a P sound has emerged between the M and the T, as it reflects the way the name is often said; MPT in a word being easier to pronounce than MT. Hampstead is another. Plumstead in south-east London (or north-east Kent) is often pronounced (including by me) as if there is a P between the M and T. Leominster is pronounced 'Lempster', and I once saw it actually spelt that way on BBC's Ceefax, with the geographically-challenged compiler no doubt being told the name over the telephone. Is Hamstead, a station north of Birmingham, also pronounced as if there is a P in it? Whilst we are talking about Hamptons, I believe a Carry On film once featured a railway station called Longhampton; they just couldn't resist having that!

 

[MadMac]

Another oddity with the cardinal directions was Clayton West. This is the full name of the village (though locals will sometimes shorten it to just Clayton) and there isn't a corresponding village called Clayton East.

One I’ve brought up here before is what was known as Mosspark (West) on the Paisley Canal line. Notwithstanding that it isn’t even in Mosspark, there never was any other “Mosspark” station, so why the ‘West’ suffix?

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 30 Dec 2025 ==

For another London example, North Woolwich is on the other side of the Thames to (regular) Woolwich. I assume Woolwich North would be somewhere on the south side of the Thames by the ferry pier.

To further confuse matters, 1st generation DMUs bound for North Woolwich displayed ‘Woolwich‘ on their destination blinds.

 

[Buzby]

Notwithstanding that it isn’t even in Mosspark, there never was any other “Mosspark” station, so why the ‘West’ suffix?

Well, since Corkerhill is really in Mosspark proper, it appears that the ‘West’ was appended to the next station on the line - no doubt due to its ’garden city’ desirability as part of its formation as an improved environment from the tenements of old?