Nine Elms

Nine Elms is a suburb of London, situated in the far north-eastern corner of the London Borough of Wandsworth between Battersea and Vauxhall.

It is primarily an industrial area, dominated by Battersea Power Station, Battersea Dogs and Cats Home, railway lines, a major Royal Mail sorting office and the New Covent Garden Market.

Nine Elms Lane was named, around 1645, from a row of trees bordering the road. In 1838, at the time of construction of the London and Southampton Railway, the area was described as “a low swammpy district occasionally overflowed by the Thames osiers beds, pollards and windmille and the river give it a Dutch effect.…”

Nine Elms railway station opened on 21 May 1838, as the first London terminus of the London and South Western Railway which that day changed its name from the London and Southampton Railway. The neo-classical building was designed by Sir William Tite. The station was connected to points between Vauxhall and London Bridge by Thames steam boats. It closed in 1848 when the railway was extended to a new terminus at Waterloo station (then called Waterloo Bridge Station). The redundant station and the adjacent area, to the north of the new mainline, became the London and South Western Railway’s carriage and wagon works and main locomotive works until their relocation to Eastleigh in 1909. The company’s largest locomotive depot was located on the south side of the main line. The buildings, damaged by bombs in World War II, were...
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