Southbury

 

Southbury
'Southern manor’ or possibly 'land south of the manor’. ‘Southberyfeld’ 1420, ‘Southbury feld’. Preserves a medieval name recorded in the old field name

Southbury Road.

Southbury Station, 1^st October 1891. Between Turkey Street and Edmonton Green on One Railway.  Built by the Great Eastern Railway and originally called ‘Churchbury’, it was sited quarter of a mile west of Ponders End High Street - There were only a few cottages between it and the Hertford Road. It is an impressive building for this line, single -storeyed with Jacobean gable, on a bridge.  There are two platforms, with a booking hall at street level.  Red brick, with stone embellishments, and when first opened, it included a substantial canopy over the central section.  The redbrick platform buildings were typical of those erected in the Great Eastern suburban area around the 1890s, and included separate waiting rooms for ladies travelling first and third class. It was all very Bedford Park and built to match the suburban housing, which it was hoped would follow. In  1909 it was closed to be reopened in 1915 and closed again in 1919. The stati merchants, although some of its original entrance gates survived, still painted in faded Eastern Region green.
Locomotive a large mainline steam locomotive. 4-6-0, a tender engine of Germanic or Polish appearance.  At the south-east comer of Southbury station. It was a Finnish main line, 5ft gauge, HR1 class Pacific, number 1016. Built in 1955 by Tampella AB with The number 1016 displayed on the cabside. It had an eight-wheeled tender on two bogies and smoke deflectors at the front. Associated with the Enfield Timber Company and Long & Somerville. Gone
Kingsmead School Theatre.  A new auditorium in the shell of the school hall. Balcony across the rear of the stage. Tim Foster 2007.
Two brick works, moving stock bricks for the building of London off the west end of the station. One of them served by a siding.
Ripault's Ltd factory, built 1936 by A. H. Durnford, with long white Art Deco facade. The firm was famous for telephone and electrical equipment.  Now M.A.N

on became a joinery works, the platform canopies were boarded in and it was also later used as by a building merchant In  1960 it was again reopened when it looked rather run down but retained a few interesting relics – including a large enamel name board, fixed to the wall beneath the up side canopy, and also a window engraved 'Ladies Third Class Waiting Room'.  These were kept but the old sign reading ‘Churchbury’ was discarded.  It was given cold cathode strip-lights, which displayed the station's name.  Otherwise the station remained substantially original.  Later with platform buildings were demolished, and the canopies reduced to short lengths at the country end. The western wing of the street level building has gone.Goods yard at the London end.  The former goods yard later occupied by a builder's