Thornton Heath is a district in South London and now within the London Borough of Croydon but about 1½ miles (2.4km) north of the town. The station was opened in 1862 by the London, Brighton & South Coast Railway (LB&SCR) and today is served by Southern trains to and from London Victoria Station on the Brighton main line. To this day, the building remains largely unchanged from that shown on the postcard view, although the small ornate tower on the roof is no more.
Standard gauge horse trams of the Croydon Tramways Company, later the Croydon & Norwood Tramways Company, passed this location from about 1880. The horse tramways in the Croydon area were electrified from 1901 and were operated by the British Electric Traction Co. (BET) under lease from Croydon Corporation who built and owned the tramway, together with much of the rolling stock. Full details of these early developments can be found in other Croydon monographs in this series (see Postcard Index).
The main tramway route ran from Norwood in the north, down through Croydon and further south to Purley. The branch line from London Road to Thornton Heath, along Brigstock Road and past the station, opened on 10th January 1902 with services operating from here to Purley. Originally, the track looped round Thornton Heath to re-join other lines back towards Croydon but in 1913 the link was closed and trams terminated about 500 yards beyond the station off to the right in our view.
In August 1905, Croydon Corporation informed the BET that they wished to terminate the leasing arrangement, which duly occurred in 1906.The BET owned some of the trams (even though they had the corporation name on the side) and they were quickly removed from the corporation's tracks. One such tram was no.59 shown on the postcard, part of the batch 56-60. These had been built for the BET in 1902 by Brush. Although outwardly similar to Croydon Corporation cars 46-55, also of 1902 but built by G F Milnes, they had Brush type B maximum traction bogies which proved less reliable that the 'equivalent' Brill 22E bogies of the corporation cars.Trams 56-60, together with the other BET-owned tramcars, joined the fleet of the newly formed South Metropolitan Electric Tramways (SMET), where they were renumbered as 27-29, 31 and 35. It is not known if they were renumbered in the same sequence but tram 59 on the postcard may have become 31 with SMET. Few modifications or improvements were ever made and, in 1933 when London Transport was formed, these five by then antiquated trams (designated as 'Type L') were stored out of use until scrapped in 1934.
The illustrated postcard was printed and published c.1904-05 by Stengel & Co. of Dresden, with serial number E 25988, and was posted from SE London to Cobham, near Gravesend, in January 1907. The card was printed in black and white by the collotype process (a form of lithography) but then hand-coloured. Stengel & Co. was founded, in part, by Emil Stengel in 1885 and was the world's most prolific postcard printer/publisher from the 1890s and into the early 20th century.
The view shows tram 59 arriving at the station from Purley, having just come up Brigstock Road from the London Road and the picture includes some interesting detail. On the right are the offices of Rowland & Co., coal merchants (coal merchants often set up shop at railway stations for obvious reasons), a horse carriage waits outside the station with the horse covered by a coat which suggests a winter or early morning scene and, in the shadows, are families with children in early perambulators.
There was an extended loop at this point and the traction pole on the left is also home to a large suspended gas lamp inside the glass bulb. When the mantle needed changing, the whole assembly could be wound down on a cable running inside the pole and bracket from a winding mechanism inside the base.
Latterly, London Transport tram route 42 from Croydon served Thornton Heath and station until Stage 3 of the tramway abandonment programme on 7th April 1951, when the service was replaced by buses.
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