Betts Park, Anerley: last trace of the Croydon Canal

Image: © Christopher Hilton Taken: 13 Oct 2009

The Croydon Canal was built in the early nineteenth century, running from the Grand Surrey Canal north of the present New Cross Gate station, to a basin under the site of the present West Croydon station. As those details suggest, it was later bought by a railway company and much of its trackbed used by what became the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway's main line south. Where the canal swung off the straighter course of the railway it has largely been built over. Here in Anerley, however, the canal did an S-bend around some curves in the land whilst the later railway carved straight through them, and a short stretch of the canal survives a hundred yards or so off the railway line, converted to an ornamental lake in Betts Park. The only other surviving piece of canal infrastructure is its reservoir half a mile south-west of here, now South Norwood Lake and like this preserved by being in a park.

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