The Sutton loop: Epilogue

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I have officially finished the Sutton loop posts. Let's goooooooooooo!

This has arguably been the longest running series on my blog, because it dates right back to the early, innocent, halcyon days. The days when I decided going on a train and taking photos through the window constituted enough real world exploration to then write a blogpost around it. You do need to bear in mind that I had also recently written posts about the UN, by-elections, and a post about e that was half apology. As such, the Sutton loop post was as eclectic as the rest, yet through a modern lens, also looks the most indicative of where the blog would go. And sure, I would then start writing up regular posts about random South London suburbs, and the Sutton loop played into that quite often, but those posts were never about the railway history specifically. With the Sutton loop, that was the main lens to look through.

So, to celebrate, let's go through all the posts in one very handy directory!

My journey may have not been exciting, what with only overgrown greenery and suburban houses to look at

And somehow, despite that statement, I have since visited all the other stations! If we go by Blogger's very unreliable viewing data, this is still the second most viewed post linked to the Sutton loop that I've written. In my opinion, it's somewhat mid, mainly because I didn't visit any of the places I wrote about, aside from Streatham or Sutton, on the trip, but also because the writing itself is extremely passive. It's a decent start, I suppose, and I certainly didn't expect it to follow me around all this time later.

 

What about Streatham station? That station was built in 1868 - now we can see why Streatham Common is named as such, it was the closest at the time - and is now part of the northern end of the Sutton Loop (also blogged about before) 

Yes. Yes it was.

This post was merely me wanting to find out why Streatham Common was called so despite being so far from Streatham's suburban centre. In the end, the post involved me asking someone to take a photo of Streatham Hill, and whilst I don't dislike it, I do also feel like it's too 2023 for me. I'm not rewriting it, of course, but again it's very passive. 

There's not much to see around West Sutton station, accessible only by the 413 bus route if you're not keen on trains.

This is where the obsession began. I had been to Morden Hall Park that same day, and as I was going home, I decided to check out West Sutton, primarily for Sutton United's ground, but also as an additional curiosity. At this point, I think my writing was slowly getting better, and whilst this post is delightfully brief, it's also quite representative of an area as underrepresented in railway stats as it is. 

And I suppose from here, I kept on going.

I've mentioned Haydons Road station in my blogpost on the Sutton loop, and having been there that day, I can confirm that tourists don't really need to flock here.

In hindsight, having read the post again, I hardly describe Haydons Road station, though I suppose the description of Plough Lane and the Wandle makes up for it. I am not going back for the station...I hope. However, on the whole, I really like this post. I linked to it on Twitter and it seems like it got semi-popular, getting some interactions, and if I can trust Blogger's viewing stats, it was briefly one of my most popular posts. I think it deserves more love too; it's one of my best from 2023, I think, and it came out during what was then my most productive month for my blog at the time.

Want a place that feels like a village but isn't? Then go to Carshalton.

As you can tell with the time gap, I didn't really care that much for the Sutton loop yet. However, I had wanted to blog about Carshalton Ponds for a while, partly because they looked lovely, but also because I was very interested in the Wandle at the time. So I managed to get an entire post out of Carshalton, and the mention of the station did at least save me some time in the future (re: Hackbridge).

The area itself might not be all too intriguing, what with Hackbridge being a standard suburb in South London with a railway and housing and cornershops

This could have been a sign to come - I had indirectly ticked off another area on the Sutton loop without anyone noticing. That's without the fact I'd been to Sutton Common and Morden South a month earlier, but hadn't blogged about them in the end. Yet whilst this post was somewhat about Hackbridge, it also definitely wasn't. It was about an island in the middle of two spokes of the Wandle, and I think the post does a good job of that. Less so regarding the railway reportage, but that was to come...

The District line arrived here in 1889, and in later years it became part of the Sutton loop and tram network.

Again, this wasn't exactly a mark that Sutton loop mania was to come - I'd wanted to blog about Wimbledon for a while - but yet again, I'd managed to tick off another station. I even mentioned Wimbledon Chase at the end! I had linked to the Sutton loop post, though, so clearly I'd had an idea of linking all the stations up at some point. That idea soon became a reality, though, and the pace accelerated come 2025.

The least used station in South London is on the Sutton loop. Morden South opened in 1930, initially as part of an attempt to bring the District line down to Sutton, though it only came about after plans to build a "South Morden" station were sidelined.

Least used South London station is attractive enough for me to want to go and visit, but I made it a reality anyways. I wrote up the post when I was on holiday I think, and so I was on the beach when you first saw it. It's apparently my most viewed Sutton loop-adjacent post according to Blogger, but I think that's due to loads of bots and crawlers feasting on my blog around that time - most of my posts from then have very inflated view counts.

And clearly I took this to the extreme. Pre-Morden South, I had written about 6/15 areas in some form on the blog, and indeed, the remaining posts have usually featured several stations which happened to be near each other geographically.

And with that, my miniblogging of the Sutton loop is nearly over...at least, one half of it. 

How wrong I was. Sure, I was at 9/15 now, but I still had a long way to go. Being able to tick off two rather unloved stations at once, due to their proximity, was a plus for me, and I reckon if I knew how much effort this project would have taken me, I'd have included Morden South in the post too. Either way, both were wonderful little slices of South London suburbia, and this is one of my favourite Sutton loop-themed posts.

In other words, there isn't much to say about St Helier itself, and the surrounding area is a snapshot of unglamorous suburbia. My Sutton loop exploration will soon be over. 

Well, four months later isn't really soon...

Sure, St Helier is unremarkable, and in a way it's very similar to the rest of the stations around this side of the loop, but one thing which saved me from throwing in the towel was likely that St Helier itself is more interesting when you walk away from the station. Apart from the posts on Carshalton and Wimbledon, I never really did that with these posts, mainly because the focus is on the Sutton loop stations and the directly nearby localities. I kind of had to mention the hospital because that's what comes to mind when one mentions St Helier, at least for me, so it made me go out and visit. Perhaps I should have done that more often, but it's too late I suppose.

From here I started revising for my A Levels, and when I did blog, they were usually much longer posts and commonly not about South London. The OPZ series, though kind of on ice right now, has probably been more satisfying than the Sutton loop posts since I've just got bored of South London. Every suburb this side of the river feels kind of similar, and the history is also often one-note: "nothing was here until the railways came". In a weird way, I've grown bored of London. I'll elaborare this in a moment. 

Even after the A Levels, I've felt very burnt out, and despite the promise of 100 days of holiday, I'm not sure just how hedonistic I am to take that amount of time and run with it. I'd wanted to visit Mitcham to finish off the series for a while, though, so I did. But I also found myself simply not wanting to blog. But I wanted to finish the series, so I kind of did in the most half-arsed way possible, just to get anything out there so I could say I did it.

Now, you'll have noticed that on no occasion in these new posts have I actually been on the Sutton loop. 

But what Thameslink wants, I get...

At least in the last entry, I managed to somewhat diversify and get a mention of Streatham Vale and Pollards Hill in. But by now, it was almost certainly too late to rekindle my interest in the series - the Sutton loop had become a scapegoat for my writer's block. 

Overall, I'd say the experience was positive, but right now, looking back on everything, I'm not sure what I achieved. At least I visited all the stations, but I did so out of chronological order, and spaced out so far apart I doubt many would have noticed this was my aim unless they finished reading all the posts. You can read all the entries by clicking on the "Sutton loop" label, and follow my trip round the railways as well. Maybe you'd like to do it yourself - if you approach it with the right mindset, it can be a fun time, exploring the same drab, mundane, identikit housing which clogs up most of Sutton and Merton. 

I also wonder whether this series will be my last hurrah when it comes to blogging about South London. It's been lots of fun, for sure, but I also don't want to focus just on this side of London, because it does sort of bore me now. The post about the Northern City line was lots of fun to explore, mainly because it was a part of London I'd hardly been to. I like Merton, sure, but it can get samey after a while.

I have blogged about places in all the boroughs, aside from Kingston, Greenwich and Bexley. Before my Oyster card expires, I might visit one location in each borough, just to prove I appreciate all of them, and then it might be it. I might do another retrospective afterwards, too. All of this is to say: I like South London, but not so much that I want to devote a blog to it. I mean, this blog isn't about one topic, anyways, so in the end, it doesn't even matter.

Either way, thanks to the Sutton loop for the good memories, but it's time to leave it behind. Unless I do an updated version in ten years time or something.

Somehow, it's all over.

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