Talk:Kemp Town railway station

Kemptown vs. Kemp Town

The name of the station given within the article has been changed twice, recently, by an anonymous editor, from Kemptown to Kemp Town. These two names are not the same thing, as can be seen in the Kemptown and Kemp Town articles, and the history of this present article. If you believe the station was actually called "Kemp Town Railway Station" and not "Kemptown Railway Station", please provide evidence for this. The sources supporting "Kemptown" include the website "My Brighton and Hove" and the newspaper "The Argus", although I don't have exact references to hand to cite right now. More to the point, the station was well outwith the actual Kemp Town estate. An ideal reference, if anybody could provide one, would be a British Rail document of some kind, or a photograph including the station nameboard. – Kieran T ^{(talk | contribs)} 00:28, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Are you sure it was the LCDR? I would have though it was the SER - anyway the Southern E group have an old magazine article in this branch on their website ;) Pickle 07:28, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

These websites support "Kemp Town" [[1]], [[2]], [[3]], [[4]]

These website support "Kemptown" [[5]]

I think there is a stronger support for "Kemp Town". This article [[6]] states that this area of Brighton was build by a Thomas Read Kemp. Canterberry 07:30, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Please refer to the Kemptown and Kemp Town articles I linked to at the start. Kemp Town and Kemptown aren't the same things, you see, so the involvement of Thomas Reid Kemp isn't directly relevant to the station name. – Kieran T ^(talk) 11:05, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm hypothesizing here but I suspect originally the area we are talking about was known as Kemp's Town (after Thomas Kemp, who started development of the area), this got shortened to Kemp Town, eventually the local pronunciation became Kemptown. Now to the question, I to would suggest that "Kemp Town" is technically correct, it's just not called that locally!(SouthernElectric 08:50, 8 October 2007 (UTC))

That's not backed up by any period documentation (apart from the bit about Thomas Reid Kemp being the founder, of course). If it was ever called "Kemp's Town" by anyone, that would have been the colloquialising. – Kieran T ^(talk) 10:52, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

My wife was born and bred Brighton, and she assures me that is is "Kemp Town" (two words). So as far as she is concerned (and as a local person), she has never known it as "Kemptown" (one word). Canterberry 09:45, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Just to clarify where I was coming from with my earlier comments, I lived for eight years approximately 100 yards from the station. It was always Kemptown to me and all my neighbours :) Doesn't mean that's correct, but it's why there is confusion in the first place. – Kieran T ^(talk) 10:52, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

I've certainly heard both 'Kemp (pause) Town' and 'Kemptown', I suspect it's in the breading (so to speak!), but I do agree that the correct pronunciation is "Kemp (pause) Town" IYSWIM... (SouthernElectric 10:00, 8 October 2007 (UTC))

As I said in the original comment, this is all very interesting speculation... but what would very simply solve the problem, and in proper Wikipedia fashion, would be a verifiable reference document, perhaps published by the railway at some point. Until we find such a thing, we're just turning this into a discussion forum! – Kieran T ^(talk) 10:52, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

How about the OS map excerpt found above plate 31 in "Brighton to Eastbourne" by Vic Mitchell & Keith Smith, Middleton Press 1985 (ISBN 0 906520 16 9), this Most defiantly displays the name of the station as "Kemp Town Station". (SouthernElectric 11:09, 8 October 2007 (UTC))

(Resetting indent for people with smaller screens) That sounds pretty good to me, although it's a shame not to get a railway's-own reference. Is it certainly a real OS map feature, and not an overprint by the publishers of the book (to make the map clearer)? (We could verify that detail if it says which edition of the OS map is used, which presumably it will if the book itself is properly referenced.) Those details would make it a pretty sound reference to use. I'm just being picky because the name of the station is a pretty major feature of the article! :) – Kieran T ^(talk) 11:18, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

The first photograph on this page [7] clearly shows the name on the side of the signal box a reading "Kemp Town Junction" ... how much more evidence do we need. Surely a clear photograph must make this argument conclusive. Canterberry 11:37, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, not much — that's exactly the sort of thing we needed! – Kieran T ^(talk) 11:56, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Actually, it might be a 1931 town planning map rather than a OS map, which (if so) would have used the official name. There is also (above plate 25) what looks like an excerpt from a 1890 Bradshaw's timetable showing, again, "Kemp Town". As for overprinting (or even 'faking it'), possible but unlikely IMO, the two items looks 'to original'. Also, I've just looked in my 'Red Book' map and the area is certainly refereed to as "Kemp Town" as well, their information is taken from OS sources. (SouthernElectric 11:48, 8 October 2007 (UTC))

Thanks so much for checking. It's important that we get this stuff right rather than allowing WP's considerable weight in things like Google results to become a source of hearsay and misinformation. Let's change the article then. – Kieran T ^(talk) 11:56, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

We might need to reference this book "The Kemp Town Branch Line" by P.A. Harding (1999). (ISBN 0 9523458 4 6). Canterberry 11:52, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Added in as a general reference, and the move done. I've kept "Kemptown" where that is explicitly what's being talked about, and changed to "Kemp Town" where it's the station or line name. We don't yet know about the tunnel so I've left the references to it alone, at "Kemptown Tunnel". Did it actually have an "official" name? – Kieran T ^(talk) 12:04, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Bit rotten on poor old Harding, who wrote a whole book about it, that he's only a "general reference". Afterbrunel (talk) 18:41, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

Update

I have added some material from Harding and Turner, surely both more authoritative.

So far as the extensive debate above about Kemp Town or Kemptown is concerned, the issue of how local people nowadays refer to the district is irrelevant. What is important is what the LBSCR called their station. There are many cases where railways used their own variants of local names. Obvious examples are the Redruth and Chasewater Railway, Stoke Bruern station, and if you want a present-day one, Whittlesea near Peterborough, serving the small town of Whittlesey.

It is not for us to "correct" the originals in Wikipedia. The railway spelling Kemp Town can easily be established, quite apart from looking in Harding or Turner, by the cheap and easily obtainable Bradshaw reprints, 1922 for example. Afterbrunel (talk) 08:59, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

A photo of the station signage should settle it. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:38, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

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