page_title: Forest Hill railway station
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Forest Hill railway station / History
caption_attribution_description: Pre Grouping railway junction around Croydon, Norwood &amp; Woodside
context_page_description: Forest Hill railway station serves Forest Hill in the London Borough of Lewisham, south London. The station adjoins a road which serves as part of the A205 South Circular Road.
  The station is managed by London Overground, with Overground and Southern trains serving the station. Thameslink services also pass through the station. It is 5 miles 50 chains down the line from London Bridge, between Honor Oak Park and Sydenham, in Travelcard Zone 3. There are four tracks through the station, although only the slow lines have platforms.
  There are two entrances, the main one being on platform 1 at the bottom of the South Circular Road, and a side entrance on platform 2 on Perry Vale. The ticket office is placed in the main entrance, although there are ticket machines outside both entrances.
context_section_description: The station was opened by the original London & Croydon Railway (L&CR) on 5 June 1839, as Dartmouth Arms (the name of the local inn).
  The line was also used by the London and Brighton Railway from 1841 and the South Eastern Railway (SER) from 1842. In 1844, the station was chosen by the L&CR as the northern terminus for Phase 1 of an experimental atmospheric railway to West Croydon. A pumping station was also constructed at the station. The L&CR and the L&BR merged to form the London Brighton and South Coast Railway (LB&SCR) in July 1846; the following year "atmospheric" working was abandoned. In 1845 the station became Forest Hill for Lordship Lane.
  The LB&SCR moved the Down platform during the early 1850s when the line was quadrupled, and extended the island platform around 1864.
  The LB&SCR station buildings were badly damaged by bombing during World War II but were patched up and survived until British Rail demolished them in 1972 and built a much smaller CLASP system-built prefabricated station building that remains in use to this day. The short narrow island platform serving the fast lines was demolished in the early 1960s.
caption: A 1908 Railway Clearing House map of lines around the Brighton Main Line between South Croydon and Selhurst/Forest Hill, as well as surrounding lines
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