London and Brighton Railway

The London and Brighton Railway (L&BR) was a railway company in England which was incorporated in 1837 and survived until 1846. Its railway runs from a junction with the London & Croydon Railway (L&CR) at Norwood - which gives it access from London Bridge, just south of the River Thames in central London. It runs from Norwood to the South Coast at Brighton, together with a branch to Shoreham-by-Sea.

During the English Regency, and particularly after the Napoleonic Wars, Brighton rapidly became a fashionable social resort, with more than 100,000 passengers being carried there each year by coach.

A proposal by William James in 1823 to connect London "with the ports of Shoreham(Brighton), Rochester(Chatham) and Portsmouth by a line of Engine Railroad" was largely ignored. However, about 1825 a company called The Surrey, Sussex, Hants, Wilts & Somerset Railway employed John Rennie to survey a route to Brighton, but again the proposal came to nothing.

In 1829 Rennie was commissioned to survey two possible railway routes to Brighton. The first of these, via Dorking and Horsham and Shoreham was undertaken for him by Charles Blacker Vignoles, the other more direct route, via Croydon Redhill and Haywards Heath, was by Rennie himself. This latter route would have started at Kennington Park. However both of these schemes were abandoned due to lack of support in Parliament.

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