Trivia: UK stations named after pubs.

[Gloster]

Although not a station, there is Bo Peep Junction at St Leonards where the name is said to originate from a nearby pub. Whether this is so, and whether the name has any connection with sheep or is connected to games of ‘hide-and-seek’ between local smugglers and revenue men, is not so certain.

 

[Lloyds siding]

There used to be a train service between Wigan NW and Blackburn via Chorley.

First stop north of Wigan was at Boar's Head (guess what the nearby pub on the A49 road is called).

Next but one stop was at White Bear station in Adlington (the pub is still there too).

I was hoping the station near Blackburn at Cherry Tree would also be named after a pub with the same name, but that seems not to be the case.

As I understand it, Cherry Tree is named after that part of Blackburn, which is named after the pub in that area.

Britannia on the former Rochdale to Bacup line was named after the adjacent pub.

Clock Face (St Helens) was named after the Clock Face area, which was named after the Clock Face Inn (which really did have a big clock on the front).

Waterloo (Merseyside/Lancashire) is named after the surrounding area, which had originally been called 'Crosby Sea Bank'. However, a new hotel, which was to be named as the 'Crosby Seabank Hotel' had its official opening on 18 June 1816, the first anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo, the owners decided to name the hotel 'The Royal Waterloo Hotel' instead. The surrounding are became known as Waterloo thereafter.
The hotel still exists as 'The Royal'.

 

[Calthrop]

Although not a station, there is Bo Peep Junction at St Leonards where the name is said to originate from a nearby pub. Whether this is so, and whether the name has any connection with sheep or is connected to games of ‘hide-and-seek’ between local smugglers and revenue men, is not so certain.

If we feel inclined thus, to get into junctions as opposed to actual stations, named after pubs; I'd reckon that that would clock up anyway a certain number of additional names. I can think "off the bat", of two in the east of England: Three Horse Shoes Junction between Peterborough and March, for the Benwick freight branch; and Pyewipe Junction west of Lincoln, named after the pub called the Pyewipe -- dialect word for the lapwing or green plover.

On an open-top bus tour of the Hastings / St. Leonards area: when passing the Bo Peep pub as above, the guide shared with us the info that the rhyme about Little B.P. and her flock, in fact originated in that area and was really about smugglers-versus-Customs: the "sheep" actually referring to smuggled goods which were "lost" -- cunningly concealed -- and then "found" again when the coast was clear... I personally am sceptical about these rather frequently heard "explanations" of nursery rhymes' really being about serious adult business -- political, martial, criminal or whatever -- from times gone by: tend to suspect that in fact the rhymes were from the first, just innocent nonsense dreamed up by children and their carers; and that the stuff about their supposedly real meanings, is "blarney" made up by people wishing to seem clever.