Hatton Cross Railway Station's Cross
Since Hatton Cross Railway Station was not specifically built for Christian worship, why does 'Cross' feature in the name? Can a cross be found there?
Hatton Cross Station
Close to London Heathrow Airport is the Hatton Cross Station (opened 1975). This tube station is located in what remains of Hatton village.
An Ordnance Survey map of the area dated 1822 shows quite a large village labelled simply 'Hatton'. There are buildings from the 17th century and it's unknown, but quite possible, that there was a Market Cross in the village.
However, it's more likely that the 'Cross' of the station name refers to the nearby crossroads where the Green Man Lane, which used to lead out onto the Heathrow moors, crosses the busy Great Southwest Road (A30).
In the 1940s, way over on the other side of The Pond, American lyricist Mack Gordon wrote the words for the famous railroad song Chattanooga Choo Choo, played by the Glenn Miller Orchestra in the movie Sun Valley Serenade.
That has nothing to do with Hatton Cross Station, served by the Piccadilly Line of the London Underground, other than Mack Gordon also wrote The Sun Has Got His Hat On for the 1932 film Piccadilly Jim.
That film was based on a novel of the same name by English P.G Wodehouse, the famous humorous and satirical novelist of Jeeves, Wooster, and others of that upper-class ilk.
The name "Piccadilly", as you probably already know, comes from piccadill, a type of stiff, high collar that was fashionable in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, often worn by English gentlemen. It was a fashionable item in the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods.
Despite all those desperate attempts to relate Hatton to the Sun putting its hat on, "Hatton" is is just the name of the village mentioned above, in the London Borough of Hillingdon.
"Hatton" is thought to come from the Old English word haga (meaning "enclosure" or "fenced area") combined with -ton (meaning a settlement or town) and is old Anglo-Saxon for 'heath farmstead'.
