Clapham Junction Station 

In De Profundis, he recalls being recognised on the platform and mocked by a small crowd as he stood handcuffed between warders — a moment that has become one of the most powerful written accounts of public humiliation faced by queer people under Victorian law. A rainbow plaque on platform 10 now marks this event, installed following campaigning by local LGBTQ+ groups including the Wandsworth LGBT+ Forum (later Queer Wandsworth) and Wandsworth Oasis, alongside arts partners such as Studio Voltaire, based in neighbouring Clapham.
Although Clapham Junction takes its name from the neighbouring district, the station itself sits in Battersea, within the London Borough of Wandsworth. As a major transport hub linking south-west London to central London and beyond, it became part of the everyday routes between home, work and social spaces for many queer people, helping to sustain the dense cluster of gay-friendly cafés, restaurants, bars and venues along nearby Lavender Hill — directly opposite the Clapham Grand, one of the borough’s major performance venues.
This easy access contributed to the area’s reputation as socially mixed and relatively welcoming, supporting everyday queer visibility alongside nightlife and performance spaces elsewhere in the borough. The station also sits between two large open landscapes that feature elsewhere on this map — Battersea Park to the north and Clapham Common to the south-east — both of which developed their own queer histories. In this sense, Clapham Junction connects multiple queer geographies through movement rather than through any single scene or venue. Its significance today comes not only from Wilde’s journey, but from these accumulated patterns of travel, connection and visibility that have passed through it over many decades.