If you ever fancy a cheap excursion into Surrey by train, all without travelling beyond zone 6, try the Banstead Loop.
It's not technically a loop, you have to get off and walk in the middle, also that's not an official name (it just passes through what used to be Banstead Urban District). But the Banstead Loop does spin by the finest racecourse near London, also it only takes an hour and ten minutes from Purley to Sutton, like so.
Purley: This zone 6 metropolis needs no further introduction. Reedham: One of London's 10 least used stations (being quite near Purley). Coulsdon Town: Used to be called Smitham prior to 2011. Even fewer passengers than Reedham. Woodmansterne: Still in London, just, by 500m. Not in the village of Woodmansterne, more Coulsdon West. I blogged about the station and its hinterland in some depth in 2018.
Chipstead: Full bloggage two months ago. In short, the railway arrived in 1897 and a commuter village grew up in the valley. It's just the right side of posh, thus sadly no chip shop. Its finest feature is Banstead Woods, an expansive ancient woodland on the chalk escarpment. If you have the time it's probably the nicest place on the loop to stop off, but best carry on.
Before long the housing stops and the Green Belt kicks in, which means a lot of trees. You might see dog walkers crossing sloping fields below the upper fringe of Banstead Woods, and lower down you might see fields of sheep as you hurtle above the wilds of Chipstead Bottom. It's all very green and pleasant but also fairly brief as the trees crowd in again, and much of the remainder of the line is then either in deep cutting or skirts large back gardens. Which brings us to...
Kingswood
Like Chipstead, Kingswood is a sprawling non-nucleated village of ancient origin which was transformed by the railway. It's also almost relentlessly posh, with swirls of arcadian housing on large plots behind mighty hedges. The man who sold the local manorial estate to the housing developers was Cosmo Bonsor, a brewery manager turned Conservative MP who moved fast. He bought Kingston Warren in 1885, joined the South Eastern Railway Board in 1894, encouraged the development of a railway to Kingswood (arriving 1897) and then disposed of 640 acres of land in 1906. The turreted manor house was eventually bought by the BBC to house its Research & Design department, making Kingswood Warren the birthplace of stereo radio and Ceefax, but they evacuated in 2010 and the big house now does luxury nuptials full time. You'll see none of this from the station.
What you will see is a tall rustic building on the up platform, ostentatiously multi-chimneyed, which still houses a part-time ticket office on the lower floor. Immediately outside is an impressively large 'kiss and ride' loop, a turnaround where cars can drop off stockbrokers on the way to the office, or wait to pick them up again on the way back. For a village where most houses own multiple vehicles there's no decent-sized car park, only a recognition that nobody wants to walk home if they can possibly avoid it. The sole watering hole hereabouts is The Kingswood Arms, another sturdy Tudorbethan mock-up, and beyond that a short parade where hair and beauty solutions proliferate. Until 2017 the biggest local employer by far was Legal and General, a short hike up Furze Hill, but their building's currently being turned into "a vibrant later living community with 270 specialist age-appropriate apartments", or old-people's home in the old vernacular. Money talks in Kingswood, always has.
Tadworth
Next stop is Tadworth, once a hamlet on the Reigate Road, now a substantial suburban village for all the usual railway-related reasons. It's also the furthest you can live outside London and still travel in from zone 6, at least south of the river, such are the historic vagaries of the fare system. It feels like a proper community as soon as you step outside the station, or at least after you've schlepped up the ramp, with a couple of short shopping parades to either side of the cutting. The smallest outlet does repairs and alterations in a delightfully retro cubbyhole, and the largest is an actual travel agent with two staff ready at their desks to coax pension overspill into funding a short hop to the Channel Islands or the safari of a lifetime. Most notably the old station building has been taken over in its entirety by a meze bar called The Bridge, this being its location, with live crooning from Martin on offer every Friday night. We still have one more stop to go.
Tattenham Corner
At the end of the 19th century two separate Acts of Parliament sought to build a railway to serve Epsom racecourse, of which the Chipstead Valley line got closest. Its terminus is at Tattenham Corner, less than 200m from the grass that horses thunder round, where once seven platforms were needed to cope with passenger traffic on race days. Today there are only three, much of the surplus having been replaced by a long cul-de-sac called Emily Davison Drive, she being the Suffragette who threw herself under the King's horse at the adjacent bend. The austere terminus would have been rammed last Saturday for the Derby but is otherwise anything but, so heaven knows how the member of staff in the modern ticket office fills their time from (gosh) before 6am to (blimey) after 10pm.
Just outside the station the main road actually crosses the racecourse, or at least the starting spur for the five furlong dash. It's amazing to stand there looking down across the entire course, the grandstand and the Mole Valley beyond, plus all the downland in the centre has public access should you fancy a wander. A huge pub called Tattenham Corner is elevated alongside, a true moneyspinner last week and with plenty of room on the front terrace otherwise. If you've ever been to the races here you'll know how glorious the location is, and if not be reassured you don't need a top hat or fascinator to soak in this scenic corner of the North Downs.
Now for the walk between the two termini. It's about a mile due north and the way the timetables pan out you have half an hour to do it, or that's how it fell for me. A broad footpath tracks the edge of a golf course, also a semi-main road, so it's hard to get lost until you reach the roundabout midway and then it's quite easy. You're essentially walking the dividing line between suburbia and the Downs, which is also the boundary between Epsom & Ewell and Reigate & Banstead, the two local local authorities. I imagine it's less fun in high heels if you bought a train ticket from Epsom Downs rather than Tattenham Corner.
Epsom Downs
Trains reached this station 30 years before the other, this being as close as the authorities initially permitted, and a phenomenal nine-platform terminus was needed to meet peak demand. Even the opening of Tattenham Corner didn't initially lead to a slimming down, and only in 1969 did British Rail finally cut the number of platforms to two, then in 1989 to one. What exists today is a runty platform with minimal facilities, the 1980s station building having since been converted to a kindergarten. What's more the last 400m of track has been converted into a redbrick cul-de-sac of about 80 homes called Bunbury Way. As a cunning way of alleviating housing pressure it's brilliant and as an additional labyrinth which passengers now have to negotiate before catching sight of a train it's pure masochism, indeed I only reached my departing train with two minutes to spare. Much more about the Epsom Downs branch here.
Banstead: A single-platform halt beside a timber yard, accessed down glum stairs, not close enough to the centre of Banstead to be properly useful. Very nearly in London but not quite. I'm due to write about it as part of my 'One Stop Beyond' series so I won't say more now, not that there is much. Belmont: A single-platform halt with no redeeming features, essentially austerity writ large, just over the Greater London boundary. Sutton: This zone 5 metropolis needs no further introduction.
It's not "the most scenic railway lines you can enjoy with an Oyster card" as MyLondon once dubiously attested. But it has its moments, the Banstead Loop, and you may never have been to any of it.
