In this series I'm taking the train one stop beyond the Greater London boundary, getting off and seeing what's there. Today that means Theobalds Grove, one stop beyond Turkey Street on the Southbury Loop, better known these days as the Weaver line of the London Overground.
Essentially we're in Waltham Cross, but that'd already had a station for 50 years when this opened in 1891 so it got called something else. It's located on a viaduct where the railway crosses the end of the High Street, but the quiet end of the High Street, not the historic end with the Eleanor Cross, the shops and all the people. I'll not be writing about that end in today's post, I'll save that for when this series returns to Hertfordshire to do Waltham Cross. Things were still so rural at Theobald's Grove in 1909 that the station stopped serving passengers, reopening as late as 1960 to serve a few suburban streets that had appeared between the nurseries. Residents of those streets included my grandparents and my Mum, who grew up here, so I know the area better than most thanks to childhood visits. Forgive me if this gets a bit nostalgic at times.
I remember the station 50 years ago as a long elevated curve accessed via deep oppressive stairwells. The steps are still just as steep but now have orange handrails and non-slip treads, which older me approves of, while chunks of plaster have fallen off the walls through lack of love. Nobody checks your ticket any more, nor will sell you one, this being one of the few Overground ticket offices TfL successfully extinguished, but there are still smiley staff with little to do other than usher you in and out. The car drop-off loop feels like an anachronism, connecting buses are still more frequent than the trains, and the car park is on the site of what used to be the goods yard. On the entire line into Liverpool Street, only Stamford Hill is quieter.
Stepping outside the station the most striking building is Christ Church, a capacious symmetrical crenellation with turrety upthrust built as a chapel of ease as long ago as 1830. It's reached by crossing a teensy stream called the Theobalds Brook, and was originally called Holy Trinity before a merger with the local Methodists in 1974. It's also invariably locked, which I know because it's where my parents got married and I have only successfully gained access once since. It was a bit weird standing mid-pew and realising I'm only here because they walked up the aisle and exchanged vows, and a bit sad on other visits when I manage to get no further than the food bank 'pantry' in the porch.
The adjacent shopping parade used to be much better, which I can tell you for certain because there used to be a knitting shop that sold craft kits for making felt animals and no such delights exist now. These days it's mostly takeaways, salons and the groceries of many nations, the only proper throwbacks being the gloomy glaziers at 263A and the ketchup-friendly Olympic Cafe at 257. The Wheatsheaf has the air of an old coaching inn but may just be a row of converted cottages, although its sporty clientele are currently locked out while the brewery hunts for a fresh landlord. The Tesco Express gave me pause for thought because it claimed to be "Serving Theobalds Park" and that's the name of a nearby luxury hotel, not the local neighbourhood.
All was fairly quiet to the south until the mid 1990s when the Department of Transport decided to build a link road to the A10 and carved a half-mile line of destruction across the neighbourhood. They spotted a gap that mostly crossed glasshouses and the backyard of a paintbrush factory, but also required the demolition of sixteen properties on the High Street including the White Hart pub. The Vine lived to fight another day and is already promoting Christmas bookings. A dozen houses on Hedworth Avenue were also sacrificed, in their place an awkward footbridge across a roaring dual carriageway in a deep concrete-walled cutting. My grandparents' house narrowly escaped, which is nice for nostalgic reasons, although standing outside I see their front garden has been fully paved over, all their windows replaced and their loft converted to an extra room supporting a slew of solar panels.
The link road means things are now rather quieter to the north of the station, a single spine road towards Cheshunt with various suburban turn-offs and a handful of reminders of more ancient times. The Coach and Horses is now a blazingly orange tapas restaurant but if you check the wall nextdoor it has a plaque saying Established 1614. Other listed buildings include a partially 16th century cottage, a 17th century white-weatherboarded property and an 18th century residence now used for car maintenance. Here too is the somewhat austere HQ of the Lea Valley Growers Association, a confederacy of local market gardeners founded in 1911 when greenhouses were the area's chief landuse and income stream. According to their website the Lea Valley still produces around 75% of the UK's cucumbers, sweet peppers & aubergines (which may well be true) and "is often described as the Cucumber Capital of Britain" (which I doubt).
The Theobalds name comes from a royal palace, a seriously blingy one, a short distance to the west of the station. William Cecil's new house came to royal attention in 1564 when Queen Elizabeth first visited, so he jazzed it up some more and she came back ten more times, on one occasion staying for nine days. James I liked it so much he bought the whole estate, or rather swapped it for Hatfield House, and duly died here in 1625 after a nasty bout of dysentery. After the Civil War the palace was alas demolished, being a possession of the losing side, and the spoils divided between members of the Parliamentary army. Later a fresh mansion was built a mile to the west, this called The Cedars, where a brewery magnate's wife once purchased the original Temple Bar as a garden monument. For a minor Overground outpost this is an immensely impressive backstory.
Today if you leave the station and walk along Theobalds Lane you come to the gates not of a palace but of a much-loved local park. The few walls that remain are from a later Georgian villa, mainly the flint walls of an arched folly, but the trees are fabulously mature and diverse as is often the case with a former rich man's garden. The royal menagerie here once contained elephants and camels, hence a scattering of wooden beasts can be found around the park, and there's also a very small pets corner (admission £2.40) with genuine armadillos, meerkats and tarantulas. This week has been designated Whose Poo At The Zoo? Week, if you're planning on bringing littl'uns. I found the park heaving with young families, especially the cafe and the snail mound, although the recreation of William Cecil's Tudor labyrinth now looks weedy and very much the worse for wear.
Head in the opposite direction from the station, i.e. east, and you follow an old country lane leading down to the river Lea. It was once called Marsh Lane, for reasons obvious when you get to the far end, and is now called Trinity Lane as a reminder of what the top end at the beginning used to be called. My Mum went to school down here, on a site that's now a block of flats, before moving to the same school as local boy Cliff Richard (although she'd left to start work at the Co-op just before he turned up). Trinity Lane tracks the entrenched Theobalds Brook, with residents on one side having to cross it when driving out, and ends today at what used to be a level crossing until Network Rail replaced it with a lofty footbridge in 2016. I bet that slows the dogwalkers down. On the far side are the glories of Cheshunt Marsh, an open area of rough grass and squidgy rivulets, and if you get as far as the London 2012 White Water Centre the nearest station is now Waltham Cross so you've gone too far.
And I still don't know why the station's called Theobalds Grove as opposed to Theobalds Lane, Theobalds Park or Theobalds Whatever.
