Places to See in South London - Wandle Park and Purley Way

Croydon Tramlink opened over twenty years ago on the 29th March 2000 with the aim of making travel to the Croydon suburbs faster and easier. The system runs from Wimbledon in the west to Beckenham and Addington in the east and has proven popular amongst residents, whilst also proving that building new transport lines is beneficial (hear that, Rishi Sunak?)

One of the areas to have benefitted from Tramlink is Wandle Park, a small residential area sandwiched between the shopping districts of Purley Way and Croydon Town Centre. As its name suggests, this residential area is located by a large park with the river Wandle flowing through it (one of two parks in London with such a name). The park opened in 1890 and is one of Croydon's oldest open areas, yet the river which lends its name to it hadn't always been visible, having been culverted for over fifty years until being exposed in 2012. You can now go up close to it, entrenched by shrubs on either side, near its source at the Waddon Ponds. From here, the Wandle ticks off areas such as Carshalton (where its ponds are one of its sources) before burrowing through the boroughs of Merton and Wandsworth (named after the river) before ending in the River Thames by Wandsworth Town. 

 I went to visit the Waddon Ponds for the blog, getting off at Wandle Park before passing through suburban roads and ending up on a muddy footpath where a large sign welcomes you to Wandle Valley - an unsuspecting park hidden by an estate from the A23. There are benches and even a memorial stone amongst the greenery, the air filled with birdsong from various birds, such as mallards and swans, as a notice board on birds "on and around the pond" will tell you. I arrived on a wet day, which probably made the footpaths more muddy than they would have been otherwise, and I don't advise turning up in trainers and walking through the grass to take a close up photo of the ponds. 

Speaking of that photo, you can see the IKEA chimneys from the pond (more on them later), and should you turn your head the other way, you might be able to make out the arches of the McDonald's logo - a reminder of how built up the area has become, where once the River Wandle would have been the main landmark.

Getting back on track - when Tramlink was being constructed, various different components were used to form the network. This included reusing former railway lines, such as that of the Woodside and South Croydon Joint Railway (which was built by both the already thrice mentioned London, Brighton and South Coast Railway and the South Eastern Railway). This forms the backbone of the tram branch running from Elmers End to Addiscombe, where the railway would then pass through the Sandilands tunnel (part of the New Addington tram branch) before continuing further towards the now closed Selsdon station. There's also the Wimbledon-West Croydon railway (of note in this blogpost), which Tramlink now uses from Wimbledon to Wandle Park, as well as other former railway stations such as Woodside (which could have been on the Jubilee line instead of Stratford!).

Then there are the new tracks, which include those leading up to Wandle Park. To aid in the construction of Tramlink, they had to construct a viaduct in place of an older Victorian footbridge so the trams could pass over trains running to Sutton. As the hyperlinked source (and Wikipedia) claim, that footbridge can now randomly be found in Swanage, having been rebuilt and standing at Corfe Castle station. I took this image from a different footbridge, conveniently with a train passing underneath this viaduct - I think it looks rather nice.

If you took the tram one stop towards Wimbledon, you'd end up in Waddon Marsh, once the site of a former railway station and with building work occupying the space behind the tram stop alongside a gasholder, but now best known for being the closest stop to a wide assortment of shops, ranging from supermarkets to department stores to furniture and carpet centres. We're on Purley Way at this point, part of the A23 which starts up north by Lambeth North station and which will end up finishing in Brighton (whilst becoming the M23 from Hooley to Crawley and Gatwick Airport). You might recognise the name of the A23 due to football pundits using it to refer to the confusing Crystal Palace - Brighton and Hove Albion derby (but neither club is truly that close to the A23 and this article claims no one likes that name). 

Purley Way was built as a bypass, intended to avoid the often-congested Croydon town centre (though it often ends up being very congested itself). So why wouldn't you build loads of shops along it, with numerous parking spaces that could make US malls blush? On one side of the road, there's a large IKEA (once the largest in the UK), built on the site of a former power station (Croydon B) with its cooling towers now emblemished with thin stripes the colours of the Swedish flag, and the shop itself once advertised on the tube map as TfL wanted more money. The nearby street names relating to scientists and scientific concepts (such as Ampere Way, the name of the tram stop nearest to IKEA, and Volta and Faraday are also honoured). The area around IKEA is itself now a large shopping area, known as Valley Park, with a cinema and countless fast food joints, which was part of a drive in the 1990s to redevelop the area.

One of the areas where such redevelopment occurred is further south by the Colonnades shopping area, where similar businesses operate - a large kids' play area, a McDonald's, a Premier Inn - and is the terminus of the 119 bus route. This area is interesting as it's part of the redevelopment of Purley Way, but came a few years after Valley Park. This is due to the Croydon Water Palace, a large indoor water park closing in 1996, just six years after opening. It was the largest leisure centre in the UK, boasting a jacuzzi and wave pool as well as an onsite cafe, and was intended to make Croydon more popular as the 90s emerged. Yet economic issues - it was too expensive to operate - as well as a child being injured due to the wave pool, meant its time was up, and this shopping area stands here instead.

Opposite the Colonnades is Croydon Airport, the first international airport to operate in the UK. It boasted the world's largest terminal, as well as being the place where air traffic control and the use of "mayday" as a distress signal began to be used (I wonder whether "mayday" comes from Mayday (now Croydon University) Hospital, which isn't all that far from Croydon Airport). It played a prominent part in World War Two as it became RAF Croydon, such as during the Battle of Britain when it was bombed on Eagle Day, destroying nearby factories and seeing the deaths of many civilians and airmen.

The expansion of suburban areas around Croydon Airport limited its growth, however, and following the emergence of Heathrow Airport following World War Two, the airport would eventually close, its final scheduled flight occurring in 1959. Its visitor centre has a de Havilland Heron watching over it and the hotel adjacent to it, and you can visit the airport and its museum should you book tickets to visit it or attend on an open day. I did not, so all you have is the photo of the de Havilland Heron.

The area surrounding Waddon and Purley Way is a unique one, one where nature, gentrification and history are closely intertwined, and possible proof of the decline of the High Street. Every weekend you can expect to find lengthy traffic should you be heading for your weekly shop, and new businesses are regularly opening along Purley Way. The focus on turning places along Purley Way into entertainment centres shows that many are looking to go out of town to have a good time, no longer wanting to be restricted by the narrow high streets with limited parking. Hopefully they visit more than the various restaurants.