Parliamentary approval for a line from
Wimbledon to
Sutton was obtained by the
Wimbledon and Sutton Railway (W&SR) in 1910 but work was delayed by the
First World War. From the W&SR's inception, the
District Railway (DR) was a shareholder of the company and had rights to run trains over the line when it was built. In the 1920s, the
Underground Electric Railways Company of London (UERL, precursor of
London Underground) planned, through its ownership of the DR and the
City and South London Railway (C&SLR, now the
Northern line), to use part of the W&SR's route for an extension of the C&SLR to Sutton. The
Southern Railway (SR) objected, and an agreement was reached that enabled the C&SLR to extend as far as
Morden in exchange for the UERL giving up its rights over the W&SR route. The SR subsequently built the line, one of the last to be built in the London area. In the original 1910 permission, the station was named "Merton Park" (not to be confused with on the
Tooting, Merton and Wimbledon Railway to the north) due to its proximity to the
Merton Park estate, then being laid out to the north, and Merton Park golf course to the south (which was subsequently developed for housing). The station opened as the temporary terminus of the line when the first section opened from Wimbledon on 7 July 1929. The remainder of the line to
Sutton opened on 5 January 1930. ==Services==