Morden is a London Underground
station in Morden in the London Borough of Merton. The station is the
southern terminus for the Northern line and is the most southerly station on
the Underground network. The next station north is South Wimbledon. The
station is located on London Road (A24), and is in Travelcard Zone 4.
Morden station was opened on 13 September 1926 with the opening of the new
extension of the City & South London Railway from Clapham Common. Morden in
1926 was a rural area and the station was built on open farmland giving its
designer, Charles Holden, more space than had been available for the
majority of the stations on the new extension. A parade of shops was
incorporated into the design each side of the imposing station entrance and
the structure was designed from the beginning with the intention of enabling
upward development, however this did not come until the 1960s when an office
building was added.
As the southernmost point on the system, Morden station served from its
beginning as the collection and departure point for numerous bus routes
heading further into the depths of suburban south London and northern
Surrey. In its early days it was a main starting point for buses heading to
Epsom on Derby Day excursions and today many bus services start from the bus
station in front of the station.
For a time before the extension to Morden was constructed, the Underground
Group wanted to continue the line to Sutton using part of a surface route
from Wimbledon to Sutton that had been planned by the Wimbledon and Sutton
Railway (W&SR) in 1910. One of the supporters of the scheme was the
Metropolitan District Railway (MDR, now London Underground's District Line)
which held shares in the company and had rights to run trains over the line
when built. A plot of land at North Cheam was even bought for a proposed
station, but when it was never built the land instead was used for a sports
facility for London Transport employees. The land was later sold and used
for a new Sainsburys superstore.
World War I had prevented any work taking place and by the early 1920s
continuing financial support from the MDR meant that it had effectively
taken control of the company. Through its ownership of the MDR, the London
Electric Railway (LER, precursor of London Underground) was able to obtain
approval to use part of the route for its C&SLR extension. The route would
have seen Underground Northern Line trains running on surface tracks from
Morden past the nearby Underground depot and on to the Network Rail
alignment close to Morden South station. Under these proposals the station
would have been named North Morden and Morden South would have been called
"South Morden".
The Southern Railway (SR) objected to this encroachment into its area of
operation and the loss of its passenger traffic to a more direct route. The
LER and SR reached an agreement that enabled the C&SLR to extend as far as
Morden in exchange for the LER giving up its rights over the W&SR route. The
SR subsequently built the line, one of the last mainline routes to be built
in the London area. It opened on 5 January 1930.
It has been said that there was originally an arrow here to complement Eric
Aumonier's Archer statue at East Finchley station, and that this was stolen
shortly after the station opened; however, East Finchley was not served by
the Underground until 1939 and the statue was not erected until 1940.
Unlike other stations on the southern branch of the Northern Line, Morden
station is not in a tunnel, but is in a wide cutting with the tunnel portals
a short distance to the north. Three tracks run through the station to the
depot, and the station has three platforms, two of which are island
platforms with tracks on each side. The platforms are accessed by steps down
from the ticket hall and are numbered 1 to 5 from east to west; the island
platforms have different numbers for each face (2/3 and 4/5). To indicate
departures, the platforms are usually referred to as 2, 4 and 5. The tunnel
portals north of Morden station have the distinction of being one end of one
of the longest tunnels in the world (17.25 miles - about 28 km) running via
the Bank branch between Morden and East Finchley.
London Buses routes 80, 93, 118, 154, 157, 163, 164, 201, 293, 413, 470 and
K5 and Night bus route N155 serve the station.