Streatham Common Station

A Memory of Streatham.

As a boy I was shipped off in the summer holidays from the family farm in Kent to stay with Grandparents at 15 Ellison Road. I soon developed a fascination for the trains and would spend most days on the station courtesy of a penny platform ticket.

Fifty or so years later I am modelling the station, and as I have a fair bit of space to play with I am able to reproduce Greyhound Lane and Streatham Vale immediately above and below the railway bridge, plus Ellison Road, Estreham Road and Audley Road.

Google Maps helps us with the general shape of things, and there are some helpful photos available including the Lens of Sutton archive which provides some good period views of the railway. However detail of the various shops is a bit sketchy. I remember best the rotund and always smiling Mrs Bell and her wonderful fresh fish and fish & chip shop on Greyhound Lane. I also remember there was a parade of (prefab I think) single storey shops on the Mitcham Lane side perched above the goods yard. No trace of those remains but I remember they were the source of Canada Bars - Cornish dairy ice cream on a stick!

At worst we will have to improvise with the modelling, but if anyone can recall detail that is likely to help us be faithful to the late fifties/early sixties their advice and recollections will be greatly appreciated


Added 19 November 2013

#306604

Comments & Feedback

Traveling up Streatham Vale from Mitcham, a group of shops appear on your right just before the road reaches the bridge at Streatham Common station. The first shops were not single story, I believe the first one on the corner was a sweet shop, it had a covered bus stop from which you could catch either an RT bus number 118, or an RM bus that was number 130. After a few shops appear the single story shops that go up the side of the bridge. Most notable of which was JG Animals that tended towards the exotic especially Reptiles and Amphibians. The shopkeeper was about the nicest man you could ever hope to meet.
The only shop on the other side of the road in the block between Aberfoyle and Eardley road that I remember, was a butchers that would give us local children chickens feet with the tendons attached so you could still operate them.

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