B A M P T O N A N D I T S R A I LWAY, 1 8 7 3 - 1 9 6 2 DAVID PALFREYMAN, OBE FRSA MA (Oxon)
A BAMPTON ARCHIVE EXHIBITION 2023
BAMPTON AND ITS RAILWAY, 1873-1962 CONTENTS 1 MISS FLORA GOES TO LONDON WITH THE AID OF BRADSHAW’S APRIL 1910 RAILWAY TIMETABLE 2 THE OXFORD-WITNEY-FAIRFORD EAST GLOUCESTERSHIRE RAILWAY, 1873
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THE BAMPTON STATION
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END OF THE LINE, 1962
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A RAILWAY REACHES BAMPTON AGAIN?
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MEMORIES AND ANECDOTES
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BAMPTON AND ITS RAILWAY, 1873-1962 CHAPTER 1.
M I S S F L O R A G O E S T O L O N D O N W I T H T H E A I D O F B R A D S H AW ’ S A P R I L 1 9 1 0 R A I LWAY T I M E TA B L E In the drawing-room of Bampton’s grandest building, the Manor House, sit Sir Adolphus Rawlinson Packington-Forsyth KC and Lady Davinia PackingtonForsyth. Their daughter Flora is with them, ‘down’ from Girton College Cambridge at the end of Hilary Term 1910. Jeavons the Butler enters with a telegram on a silver tray, announcing: ‘Telegram for Miss Flora’ (Bampton’s telegraph office dates from 1877).
the last train back from Oxford?’. Sir Adolphus rings the bell for Jeavons who is despatched to fetch the April 1910 edition of ‘Bradshaw’s’ and page 126 timetable is duly found, giving the times for the services along the OxfordWitney-Fairford branch line, also known as the East Gloucestershire Railway.
Bradshaw’s timetable - page 126 Sir Adolphus never catches the early train - the 9.57 am reaching Oxford by 10.37 am is early enough for him when he is sitting as the Recorder in Oxford’s Court; and the same train conveniently connects to the Oxford-London express for him to get to London for luncheon at his Club in Pall Mall or a meeting at his Inn of Court, while later trains get him to London in good time for a dinner at his Livery Company. The 4.25 pm or the 6.25 pm serve nicely to get him home for dinner after a busy day in Court ‘sending down’ various miscreants, and sometimes the last train from Oxford to Bampton at 9.47 pm is used after he has dined at the Oxford College where he is an Honorary Fellow and Old Member (having been ‘up’ reading ‘Greats’ at Balliol some forty years ago).
Flora reads the message and declares: ‘Papa, I have to go to London tomorrow. When is the first train to Oxford? What time can I reach Paddington? And
Hence he needs to check the timetable for the first train of the day - 7.37 am from Bampton, arriving Oxford 8.19; neatly connecting to the non-stop 8.38 reaching Paddington at 9.50 (the Paddington-Oxford line opened in 1844 as a branch line at Didcot off the London-Bristol line and was extended to
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BAMPTON AND ITS RAILWAY, 1873-1962
W Payne & Son Great Western Railway Agent for Bampton and Lechlade
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BAMPTON AND ITS RAILWAY, 1873-1962 Birmingham in 1852). He tells Flora the times, adding that the Paddington train at 7.30 pm will get her to Oxford by 8.44 and that the 8.05 non-stop reaches Oxford at 9.44 with only 3 minutes spare for the last train to Bampton (but the 8.05 does have a dining-car!). The father does not know whether to worry more about his daughter killing time for an hour at Oxford, although at least Oxford’s male undergraduates will by now have ‘gone down’ for the Easter Vacation; or about her risking not making the 9.47 and being stranded for the night in Oxford. He guesses, correctly as it turns out, that his adventurous and risk-taking daughter will be aiming for the evening 8.05; and he also guesses, again correctly, that, under the influence of Girton’s more radical ‘undergraduettes’, she has taken up with the Suffragettes and is off to London to meet up with others of that militant ilk. The Suffragette movement, founded by Emmerline Pankhurst (1858-1928), succeeded by 1918 in achieving ‘Votes for Women’ (aged 30 and over) but not without much protesting and demonstrating, including some chaining themselves to the railings outside the Pall Mall Club of which Sir Adolphus was a member; universal suffrage for all males and females over 21 arrived only in 1928. Sir Adolphus, however, dares not confront his ‘forward’ if not indeed ‘wayward’ and fiercely independent-minded daughter: he ruefully regretted, yet again, allowing her to go to that infernal Girton College! And he (as well as Lady Davinia) worried about their daughter roaming around Paddington and being on express trains where young men might lurk - but what could one do about controlling the modern young women of 1910 compared with their Victorian mother and grandmothers? And anyway, he reasoned, Flora had been getting herself back and forth to Cambridge - the 9.57 from Bampton got her to Oxford in time for the 10.50 to Cambridge on ‘The Varsity Line’, arriving 1.20; while the 1.50 from Cambridge reached Oxford by 4.27 and gave Flora chance to take tea in Oxford with friends before catching the 6.25 to Bampton, duly arriving at 7.07. In Oxford Flora would have strolled between the adjacent stations of the Oxford-BedfordCambridge line and of the Oxford-Fairford line, the latter being also the station serving the London-Oxford-Birmingham line. In the late 20th Century the Oxford-Cambridge line’s station, having latterly served as a tyre depot, has been relocated to the Buckinghamshire Railway Centre at Quainton Road, near Waddesdon. This line conveyed dons from both universities to the top-secret code-breaking facility at Bletchley Park during World War 2.
Flora at risk
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BAMPTON AND ITS RAILWAY, 1873-1962
Great Western Railway Dining Carriage
Great Western Railway Restuarant Carriage 1906
Great Western Railway Bus
Great Western Railway Truck
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BAMPTON AND ITS RAILWAY, 1873-1962 The only problem for our Flora is that Bampton Station was well over a mile north of Bampton itself and lay between Bampton and the village of Brize Norton on ‘Station Road’ connecting the two settlements. A stroll along the quiet country lane in the summer might be feasible, but not in April weather and when dark early. Miss Flora has a bicycle but the family has a ‘Bampton Voiturette’ which the Head Gardener can drive. And there might be the horsedrawn station bus or even an early motorised wagon-bus, but then as now the practicality of ‘integrated transport services’ might not match the theory in terms of the station bus meeting the 10.25 pm train and so best to despatch the Voiturette...
Before we move on to the early history of the EGR (East Gloucestershire Railway) and its Bampton Station, it is worth asking how Miss Flora could make the same journeys by public transport from Bampton to London or Cambridge and back in 2023 compared to 1910. The short answer is - rather more slowly and not at all once Bampton’s last bus has arrived at 7.27pm! She would be able to get the first No19 at 6.46 am to Witney (a journey of some 30 minutes); then await an S1 or S2 bus to Oxford (a frequent service but a journey of about an hour). Next a brisk walk from the Oxford bus-stop to Oxford railway station, and then an hour and a few minutes to Paddington - all in all, compared with 1910 (say, setting off at 7.15 in the trusty Voiturette and reaching London at 9.50, a total of 2.5 hours) in 2023 Miss Flora would be lucky to arrive within 3 hours! As for Cambridge, she would need to get to Oxford as above and then catch the X5 bus via Bicester & Milton Keynes as it trundles to Cambridge - say, all-in from 9.20 by way of leaving the Manor House in 1910 on the station bus or in the Voiturette to 1.20 for arriving on the Oxford-Cambridge ‘Varsity Line’ in ‘The Other Place’, some 4 hours compared with about 5 or more like 6 hours (depending on connections times) in the C21. There is talk of reopening the Varsity Line, once again giving folk at Cambridge University the welcome opportunity easily to get to Oxford... On the other hand, doubtless the modern Miss Flora would have her own flashy car in which to zip to Cambridge - albeit then with nowhere to park it!
Bampton Voiturette
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BAMPTON AND ITS RAILWAY, 1873-1962
Paddington Bookstall
OS Map of 1977 showing the ‘dismantled railway’
Oxford Station
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BAMPTON AND ITS RAILWAY, 1873-1962 CHAPTER 2.
T H E OX F O R D -W I T N E Y- FA I R F O R D E A S T G L O U C E S T E R S H I R E R A I LWAY, 1 8 7 3 The railway that served Bampton for some ninety years until 1962 came into being in two phases: 1861 saw Witney linking to Oxford via a spur from the Oxford-Birmingham main line at Yarnton, calling also at Eynsham; while 1873 saw another train company extending the line from Witney to Fairford as the East Gloucestershire Railway (hereafter the EGR). Other branch lines from Oxford were to Abingdon (opened 1856; closed 1963), to Princes Risborough (1864; 1963), and to ‘Blenheim for Woodstock’ (1890; 1954).
Birmingham; and the EGR was duly bought up by the GWR in 1890, while the GWR in turn became the nationalised British Railways (BR) in 1948. Many railway companies had nicknames based on their initials - some not flattering as in the Somerset & Dorset being ‘Slow & Dirty’ or the Linton & Barnstaple being ‘Lumpy & Bumpy’. One doubts the East Gloucestershire might have been ‘Energetic & Glorious’ - more likely in its 1950s declining years the ‘Enervating & Grotty’?
The Oxford-London (Paddington) line was, of course, part of Brunel’s Great Western Railway territory (GWR - aka ‘God’s Wonderful Railway’) serving Bristol, Exeter, Cornwall, and South Wales as well as north to Hereford and
The total Oxford-Fairford distance was some 25 miles of single-track railway, with Bampton being some 15 miles from Oxford; and in 1873 the route was: Fairford, Lechlade, Alvescot, Bampton, Witney, South Leigh, Yarnton, Oxford. Kelmscot & Langford was added in 1907 as a new station between Lechlade and Alvescot; while Carterton was added in 1944 to serve the important Brize Norton aerodrome and a tiny halt at Cassington was created in 1936.
Paddington Station, London
Engine 9653 at the Signal Box
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BAMPTON AND ITS RAILWAY, 1873-1962 There had been proposals for a Witney-Oxford link since as early as the 1830s in the Railway Age that had begun with the opening in 1830 of the Liverpool to Manchester Railway - which event gave the world the first railway accident when William Huskisson MP was hit and killed by Stephenson’s ‘Rocket’. Yet even during the Railway Mania of the mid-1840s the Witney-Oxford concept did not get off the drawing-board and it took until the involvement of the head of the Witney blanket-makers (Charles Early) from 1858 eventually giving rise to the successful launch of the 1861 Witney-Oxford line. Similarly, there was talk of a Cheltenham to Oxford/Birmingham railway via Fairford and Witney over several decades, but proposals were blocked by the GWR which already served Cheltenham via its Paddington-Swindon line. Had the EGR been a through line to Cheltenham (proposals to link Fairford and Cheltenham via Cirencester were still emerging as late as the 1920s) its fortunes might have been different, but ending in Fairford meant it was never a money-spinner - being always a branch line that served a thinly-populated rural area and hampered by its stations being somewhat remote from the villages they were meant to serve (as with Bampton inconveniently equidistant from both Bampton and Brize Norton). The line had to pay its way carrying blankets from Witney, shifting heavy stuff like coal and stone/slate, moving bulky materials such as timber, and (given it was serving farming territory) carrying milk along with hay and livestock (indeed the 1890 timetable shows a Sunday cattle train from Fairford to Oxford at a time when Sunday services for people were very rare - for example, one train each way ran on the Witney-Oxford stretch only from 1899).
Fairford Signals Training
Oxford - Fairford Railway Map 1877
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BAMPTON AND ITS RAILWAY, 1873-1962 There were, however, not only the ‘blanket-specials’ but also GWR excursion trains to Weston-super-Mare, Brighton, Bala, Torquay, Weymouth, and even beyond the GWR world as far as Blackpool, Liverpool, Hastings, Southsea. As early as 1865 the Witney-Oxford timetable allowed for a generous day-out in London, leaving at 8.15 am and arriving Paddington at 10.25 am - returning 6.15 pm and reaching Witney by 9.05pm ( just as Miss Flora could plan a similar day from Bampton in 1910). By the 1930s these rural branch lines would be served by a slow and grubby train consisting of two or three elderly coaches and pulled by an equally venerable tank engine - the Orient Express was not in sight! A tank engine was a stubby locomotive with its own compartments carrying water and coal - it did not have a tender as on bigger and more powerful engines. The tanks containing water were usually located either side of the boiler, and the GWR favoured larger pannier tanks. The advantage of tank engines (as in ‘Thomas the Tank Engine’) was that no turntable was needed, the locomotive could run backwards or forwards as it shuttled up and down the line - whose track might be a tad bumpy by the 1930s as maintenance was neglected.
Tivvy Bumper trains - typical of the engines used on the Witney -Bampton line.
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BAMPTON AND ITS RAILWAY, 1873-1962
Train arrivng at Fairford Station
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BAMPTON AND ITS RAILWAY, 1873-1962
Network Map 1968
the series even has its own Wikipedia entry! The same kind of nostalgia for steam trains puffing their way slowly through the green fields of Miss Marple’s England can be found in the ‘Thomas the Tank Engine’ books/videos and in the now 100+ ‘heritage’ railways. Equally evocative of rural branch lines is, of course, the famous poem ‘Adlestrop’ (Edward Thomas, 1914) - Adlestrop being a tiny village on another Gloucestershire railway line (the Cotswold Line - Oxford to Evesham); this station lasted from 1853 until 1966. If only Edward Thomas had been travelling through Bampton on that summer day in 1914... The poem reads:
The stations along the rustic branch line would have a tiny goods-yard, but even by the 1920s/30s lorries/trucks were encroaching on the railway’s freight activity. Passenger traffic was also fading as rural bus routes developed but would certainly be heavier on market days. Each station would have its Station Master, aided by a couple of Porters; there might be a signal-box; platforms would be gas-lit, as was the case at Witney right up to its closure in the 1960s. The charming BBC radio series, ‘Parsley Sidings’ (broadcast 1971/72), evokes branch line railway life in the post-War decades: the Station Master (Horace Hepplewhite) is played by Arthur Lowe, being as pompous as he was as Captain Mainwaring in the radio and TV hit ‘Dad’s Army’. The series is occasionally repeated on Radio 4 Extra and can also be heard at BBC Sounds (while the 21 episodes are available from Amazon as an Audiobook download or as a CD) -
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BAMPTON AND ITS RAILWAY, 1873-1962 But we should not overdo our nostalgia for a distant railway era - those working on them were subjected to a pretty tough regime of very long hours, often doing grimy and dangerous work involving a hefty toll of workplace accidents and injury. And at the time our Miss Flora caught her Bampton to Oxford little train, she might have ended up in a decrepit old non-corridor coach with very poor lighting and heating as she trundled the fifteen miles to and from Oxford.
The ‘Blanket Special’
Railway builders - ‘Navvies’
Witney and East Gloucestershire Branch Timetable 1878
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BAMPTON AND ITS RAILWAY, 1873-1962
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BAMPTON AND ITS RAILWAY, 1873-1962 CHAPTER 3.
T H E B A M P T O N S TAT I O N Bampton’s documented history goes back to its role as a Royal Manor in Anglo-Saxon times, more than 1000 years ago - but even earlier it was located on a minor Roman road and shows signs of being inhabited for 2000 years or more. By the 1860s, however, its activity as a market town was being eclipsed by Witney and hence Bampton was decayed and isolated - although it could boast 14 pubs serving a population of barely 1500 (only 1167 by 1901). And it was famed, then as now, for its Morris Dancing tradition; as well as possession of a magnificent and large Church, along with some grand houses. The population is now over 3000 and growing with the recent addition of several new housing estates - that population supports a Primary School, a Fire Station, a GP Surgery & Pharmacy, a Co-Op, a Post Office, several community centres/halls, an antiques centre, a picture-framer, a Chinese take-away, a nightly burger-van, a garden centre with cafe, an arts & crafts gallery, a weight-lifting gym, an award-winning butchers, a coffee-shop, a cafe, several hairdressers, a very profitable Community Shop, a newspapers van, an ‘alternative medicine’ centre, a law firm office, a weekly fish & chips van, a weekly fresh fish van, a sizeable recreation ground with pavilion, the Old Grammar School including the Vesey & Lewington Rooms and the Bampton Library: now only a mere 4 pubs (one undergoing an extensive refurb as at 2023). The Old Grammar School was recently fully refurbished through the fund-raising efforts of the Bampton Community Archive and houses a ‘Downton Abbey’ exhibition and memorabilia & craft shop as well as a splendid new community space.
Brize Norton and Bampton Station
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BAMPTON AND ITS RAILWAY, 1873-1962 The railway arrived in 1873, linking Bampton to Witney, Oxford (15 miles away), London, and the wider world of the Railway Age. Its station was typical of many a station on a rural branch line - modest buildings (some 44 feet by 15 feet, with a toilets extension; and a parcels office added after WW1), sidings with a goods shed, and staffed by a Station Master plus a couple of porters and a pair of signalmen in an 18-lever signal-box. It had two platforms since it also boasted a passing-loop on what was the single-track EGR line. In its busiest years, 1903-23, some 11,000 tickets a year were issued - but 1913 saw almost 13,000 tickets netting £5776 (plus £412 for parcels) and also 9,000 tons of freight were handled. Bampton Station in that year was responsible for about 10% of the earnings and activity on the EGR line, with Witney at almost 50%. The Bampton Station buildings were probably painted green and light buff; and in the 1950s after nationalisation BR’s standard chocolate and cream.
Brize Norton and Bampton Station
The day-out fare in 1961 to London was 20s or £1 (some £18 in 2022 £s). Station buses were provided by Payne & Sons, a Witney-based carrier. The proximity to the increasingly important RAF Brize Norton airbase meant the Home Guard during WW2 manned a rotating gun-turret at the entrance to the Station slope just by the road over-bridge. The Base itself was bombed in 1940/41 but the EGR line was unscathed throughout the War - it did eventually get some excitement, however, when in 1946 an RAF plane ended up partly on the track! The station started off in 1873 as ‘Bampton’ but, perhaps because of potential confusion with Bampton in Devon (on a line opening in 1884), by 1906 became ‘Bampton (Oxon)’ and then, reflecting the significance of the RAF Base, ‘Brize Norton and Bampton’ in 1940. Indeed the taxiways for the Base crossed the EGR line, necessitating extra-wide level-crossing gates linked to the aerodrome’s control tower. But to service-personnel their journey to the Base was on ‘The Bampton Flyer’. ‘Kelly’s Directory’ for 1895 notes that the Station Master was Henry Guna (and the Village Constable in its Police Station was Thomas Skitmore, assisted by one other policeman). An early-C20 guidebook lists the Station Master as Cecil Haywood Dicks, and notes that ‘Payne W. & Sons omnibus meets all trains’. Bampton folk memory records that by the mid-C20 taxis owned by Dickie Lane and by Mrs Amy Gerring served the Station, as well as a ‘Carrier Green’s bus’. Older folk in the village have memories of Bampton Station: for instance, sugar beet was shifted during the War in a Government allocated ‘Fifteen Ton Railway Truck’ - heavy work loading it by hand! Just after the War, as the United States Air Force set up home on the Brize Norton Base, instead of beet out by rail it was bombs in! During the1950s Bampton children cycled to the Station and caught the train to Witney to attend its Grammar School - the road was (and still is) unlit on dark winter mornings and afternoons, but at least road traffic was much less; few parents today would want their children cycling that route!
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BAMPTON AND ITS RAILWAY, 1873-1962
Brize Norton and Bampton Station
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BAMPTON AND ITS RAILWAY, 1873-1962
28 November 1946 - an Avro York MW168 misses the runway!
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BAMPTON AND ITS RAILWAY, 1873-1962
A service to Witney and Fairford waits to depart from the down bay at Oxford, hauled by GWR Metropoltan Class 2-4-0T No 3585 in around 1934 (Great Western Trust)
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BAMPTON AND ITS RAILWAY, 1873-1962
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BAMPTON AND ITS RAILWAY, 1873-1962
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BAMPTON AND ITS RAILWAY, 1873-1962 CHAPTER 4.
END OF THE LINE, 1962
With the outline of Lew Hill in the background, 57xx 0-6-0PT 9653 arrives at Brize Norton & Bampton station with the 16:26 Oxford to Fairford train on 16 June 1962, the final day of passenger services.
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BAMPTON AND ITS RAILWAY, 1873-1962 The Railway Age peaked in the early-C20 at some 20,000 miles (now about half that) and in terms of journeys per head made by the UK population: 1891, 24.4; 1901, 31; 1911, 31.7; 1921, 41.8. By the 1950s/1960s numbers were rapidly falling: as low as 19.5 in 1961. Better roads and more buses/coaches as well as private cars (a fivefold increase 1950-70) were the challenge, along with more and bigger trucks/lorries taking over freight movement. The railways (nationalised in 1948 at a cost to the taxpayer of over £30bn in 2022 £s) were losing some £1bn pa by 1960. And closure of lines was occurring even before the now infamous Beeching Report (1963, ‘The Reshaping of British Railways’) that greatly accelerated the downsizing of the system - in 1964 alone 1058 miles of track disappeared and overall post-Beeching some 35% of route miles had gone by 1970, along with some 2000 stations (a third of stations supposedly conjured up a mere 1% of fares). Dr Beeching (ex-ICI executive, later Lord Beeching) also asserted that a third of the network carried only 1% of passengers. But, in fact, our East Gloucestershire Railway (hereafter EGR) was closed in 1962 even before Beeching - in a year when 46 lines were lost covering 800 route miles; and there had been drastic cuts in the frequency of ESG services since 1958. Locally the Oxford-Woodstock branch line had gone by 1954 and the Varsity Line was shut in 1963. The Witney-Oxford stretch staggered on for goods until that activity also was ended in 1970. The ending of the line in June 1962 saw over 130 passengers on the 12.44 Oxford-Fairford train. The rails had gone by early-1965 from Witney-Fairford. The final closure of the OxfordWitney bit on 2 November 1970 then led to that track being lifted by mid-71, but in October 1970 a special train (‘The Witney Wanderer’) had left Paddington with 450-plus passengers paying 15s (75p) for the return trip to Witney. There was little by way of protest over the 1962 closure of the EGR (nor indeed generally at the time over the Beeching ‘modernisation’), although the local newspaper had some folk expressing concerns over the extra traffic that would be inflicted on the A40 into Oxford - such concerns being expressed ever since
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BAMPTON AND ITS RAILWAY, 1873-1962 as house-building has expanded Witney, Carterton, and Bampton. The station at Witney has been built over, as also Bampton Station - the latter was sadly derelict for some years until demolition in the mid-80s and its replacement by an industrial complex signed as ‘Viscount Court’ on the Bampton-Brize Norton road just after the road over-bridge by the Base (that bridge being the only remaining vestige of the 1873-1962 Railway Age for Bampton). Thus, by the mid-60s the rustic branch lines had gone the way of the local cinema, the repertory theatre, the music hall, ‘Dixon of Dock Green’ policing, off-licences serving kids a jug of beer to carry home to Dad, toddlers in prams gnawing on a pigs-trotter, tripe for tea, telegrams, corner shops offering ‘tick’ - and the last steam locomotives disappeared from BR in 1968, while in 1967 the last BR shunting horse (Charlie, aged 24) had been retired. All replaced by ‘progress’ as the 1950s morphed into the 1960s and the buzzy new age of science and technology: the TV, supermarkets, ‘Z-cars’ policing, consumerism, pop music and the hit parade, ‘teenagers’ with transistor radios tuned to Radio Caroline, ‘the twist’, motorways, ‘Tupperware Parties’, postcodes, package holidays in Spain, and much more relaxed social attitudes as deference declined (although ‘smog’ hung around and ‘The Archers’ survived...). All, however, was not necessarily ‘progress ’ - Watneys Red Barrel! But at least the Great Train Robbery did not take place on a left-over rural branch line...
Views of Bampton and Brize Norton derelict station
Overbridge No.15 Bampton and Brize Norton
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BAMPTON AND ITS RAILWAY, 1873-1962 On ‘YouTube’ there is a splendid 2021 video titled ‘Death of a Branch Line: The Oxford, Witney & Fairford Railway’ in a series called ‘Rediscovering Lost Railways’. The video flies over the EGR route and picks out tiny vestiges of what once was - and shows film footage and photos taken when once still was: note at Eynsham the diesel rail car, at Witney tank engines pulling a couple of carriages, and the images of Bampton Station plus one with an aircraft part on the line and part in the RAF base (1946). The long decline of the Railway Age is captured by, say, Agatha Christie in her 1968 novel, ‘By the Pricking of My Thumbs’ -
Like most people at the present time, the Beresfords travelled mainly by car… The railway journeys they took were few and far between… It was a time when things were beginning to happen to railways, small stations were closed, even pulled down, grass sprouted on the decayed platforms… Earlier, in Evelyn Waugh’s 1938 ‘Scoop’, the decline of the rural branch line is noted (the editor, Salter is sent by his newspaper baron, Lord Copper, from London to deepest Somerset) -
That evening, sometime after the advertised time, Mr Salter alighted at Boot Magna Halt. And hour earlier, at Taunton, he had left the express, and changed into a train such as he did not know existed outside the imagination of his Balkan correspondents; a single tram-like, one-class coach, which pottered in a desultory fashion through a system of narrow, under-populated valleys, stopping eight times… It had been a horrible journey.
‘Bampton the Way it Was’ by Freda Bradley Copies of this book available to purchase from Bampton Community Archive
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BAMPTON AND ITS RAILWAY, 1873-1962 CHAPTER 5.
A R A I LWAY R E A C H E S B A M P T O N A G A I N ? Recent decades have seen the building of a few entirely new railway lines notably, of course, HS1 and Crossrail. Sometimes lines closed in the 60s have been reopened - for instance, Oxford to Bicester, closed 1968 and reopened 1987 as the first part of the ‘Chiltern Revival’ and from 2016 linking Oxford to London Marylebone with new stations at Oxford Parkway and Bicester Village; and Oxford to Cowley might soon also reopen. And such reopened lines might also later see an old station reopened - the Coventry to Leamington line added a restored Kenilworth in 2018; while there are new stations that appear on existing lines - such as Honeybourne on the Cotswolds Line. And there are exciting plans to reopen more closed lines - for example, Bristol-Portishead,
closed 1964; and Oxford via Bletchley & Milton Keynes to Bedford as the partial restoration of the Varsity Line (and perhaps completely within just a few more years, although the Bedford-Cambridge final stage of the ‘East West Rail’ ambitious scheme is more problematic...). And, of course, there are now many ‘preserved’ or ‘heritage’ reopened lines, usually featuring steam locomotives - the first being the Talyllyn in 1955; then the Bluebell Line (1960) and next the Keighley & Worth Valley branch (1968): the 1953 Ealing Comedy, ‘The Titfield Thunderbolt’, lovingly capturing very early on this particular emerging Zeitgeist (although Valentine as played by Stanley Holloway as the saviour of the line actually wants to preserve it so he can drink all day in the buffet-car
Possible new route, one day, extending to Bampton?
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BAMPTON AND ITS RAILWAY, 1873-1962 and thereby avoid restrictive 1950s licensing laws!). As at the 2020s we have some 500 miles of such track spread over 130 lines/branches, keeping 22,000 volunteers happily engaged and employing some 4,000 staff, while carrying about 8m passengers a year: all muttering the railway employee’s prayer ‘Give us this day thy daily steam and deliver us from diesels’. Sadly, there seems no chance of the EGR being revived in such a format.
Imagine: a future Ms Flora taking a short stroll from the Manor House to the Station, having on her wrist-watch computer loaded a ticket from Bampton to Brighton or Bruges or Budapest - even to Cambridge!
What makes for such problematic futures in the case of most closed lines is partly cost and partly whether the old route has been built over, and especially the stations - the latter is the case for, say, Witney and Bampton. But the Witney Oxford Transport Group (‘Sustainable Transport in West Oxfordshire’) is undaunted, and its website has exciting proposals for a new light railway running from Oxford via the main line to Yarnton before branching off to shadow the A40 to Eynsham, then Witney, and ending at Carterton. Carterton and Witney are fast-growing towns and their commuters are putting pressure on the A40 into Oxford, with even more new housing due in West Oxfordshire over the next decade. The new line would whisk folk from Carterton to Oxford in 22 minutes, compared to pretty well an hour via the current bus-service. The WOTG estimates a cost per mile of some £12m for ‘light rail’ (‘excluding land acquisition costs’) - which compares with some £7500 (or about £700k in 2022 £s) for Oxford-Witney in 1861. And, with luck, the proposed new railway will emerge a bit faster for Witney than the 30+ years from the first of several tentative schemes in the 1830s to the delivered project in 1861.
The future Oxford Railway Station...
The fanciful dream with which fittingly to end this little book is that, continuing from Carterton’s proposed new station and swinging around the edge of the RAF Brize Norton Base, the line might one day be extended to Bampton - a new Bampton Station, rather more conveniently located, opening in 2073 on the 200 anniversary of the arrival of Bampton’s first railway?
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BAMPTON AND ITS RAILWAY, 1873-1962 CHAPTER 6.
MEMORIES AND ANECDOTES CATCHING THE TRAIN..
TRAVEL TO WITNEY SCHOOLS
Question: Has anybody ever missed a train by minutes then walked up the line behind it to catch it at the next station? Answer: I have together with three other would be travellers
In the late 1950s, I travelled by train with other pupils to attend school in Witney, either at Witney Grammar School (Henry Box) or West Oxfordshire TechnicalCollege (now Abingdon and Witney College). To get to Brize Norton and Bampton Station, we were issued with sturdy Phillips bicycles by the Oxfordshire County Council. (If we used them for three or more years, we were allowed to keep them: it was not worth reissuing them to someone else!). When we arrived at the station, the girls stored their bicycles in the Women’s Shed and the boys theirs in the Men’s Shed.
It all happened in the winter of 1955/6. We were living at Alvescot, I was working in Oxford and an horrific snowstorm had blocked the roads, leaving me unable to use my motorcycle. I staggered to Alvescot station and found the train to Oxford had just left. Three other travellers had arrived at the same time. The stand-in railway clerk (who happened to be my uncle) told us the train would be waiting at the prefabricated wartime station at Black Bourton for some 45 minutes as the downtrain, from Oxford, would not reach Witney until three quarters of an hour after it’s due time. Our ‘up’ train would be held until the train from Oxford was nearing Witney. Witney was the only place with twin tracks - required so trains could pass in opposing directions. The railway clerk said we could try walking up the track to Black Bourton, as it was only just over a mile. This all four of us did and we caught our train to Oxford, eventually getting there very late and very wet and bedraggled. GT
Very occasionally the train coming from the Witney direction would be late arriving at Brize Norton and Bampton, so we would hop on board (much to the disapproval of the station staff) and have a ride to Carterton Station first, where pupils from Clanfield and Black Bourton would board the train. We then travelled back to Brize Norton and Bampton Station and onwards to Witney. As with pupils nowadays, there were always ‘incidents’ occurring! On one occasion, a pupil managed to drop his satchel on the tracks as the train was arriving at the station. Staff had to get the driver to reverse the train out of the station so that the satchel could be retrieved. Most of the time the train had non-corridor coaches, but every now and then we would have an ‘upgraded’ train having coaches with a corridor. On one journey home, unbeknownst to us, a special constable from Bampton was on board. As he patrolled along the corridor, he caught us playing cards, betting with matchsticks. He gave us one hell of a ticking off and told us not to gamble again.
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BAMPTON AND ITS RAILWAY, 1873-1962 On another occasion, we had boarded the train at Witney for a homeward journey. Whilst the train was still at the station, in one compartment, a pupil’s cap was being tossed around. The boy concerned, claimed that as he went to grab his cap he accidentally pulled the emergency brake chain! Oops, the trained was delayed at the station for sometime until the problem was resolved. On one journey, I remember seeing a verse written next to the emergency brake chain by some joker. It read:
Most worrying of all though was thousands of bombs that came by rail; this was at the height of the Cold War. I remember the Witney Gazette reported that someone in authority from Russia had contacted residents in Brize inquiring as to how comfortable they were feeling living right next to the USAF at Brize Norton! DR
MISSING
“If Five Pounds you can afford, Try your strength and pull the cord”. My final recollection is that we would sometimes find a discarded newspaper in our compartment. This prompted us to throw a page of the newspaper out of one window, then rush to the opposite window and look out to see if it had flown over the train. One time the newspaper didn’t appear over the train, so the pupil concerned rushed back to the first window (not knowing that someone else had closed the window) and hit his head against the thick plate glass, cracking it! A painful experience. Many happy and eventful journeys. DJR. (WOTC pupil)
BOMBS In the late 40’s into the early 1950’s the Americans arrived at Brize Norton airbase, right next to the railway station, and made full use of the facilities. Whilst we were unloading/ loading our goods they would be doing likewise with theirs and what an array of goods they had. They were extending the runway at the Airfield to accommodate larger aircraft so there was earth moving equipment, the size of which we had never seen before.
I remember throwing in my job one day at the age of 18 after an argument with a colleague and taking the train to Oxford and joining the army! Signing up for 22 years. My parents were not best pleased when I got home that night and told them! But that was that, I had signed up to be a QA nurse! Coming back from a three-year stint away in Malaysia, I arrived at Oxford Station to catch the train to Bampton. The train was always on a small side platform away from the main line. There was the train so I jumped on. As the journey started and I was looking out, the scenery seemed very unfamiliar. Being away for three years I assumed things had changed but was slightly mystified as everything seemed very different. When I arrived in Banbury, all was clear, I had boarded the wrong train. The station staff were very sympathetic and sorted out a return to Oxford where I finally got on the right train and arrived back home in Bampton, a journey which had taken about 3 hours longer than planned. MC
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BAMPTON AND ITS RAILWAY, 1873-1962 FURTHER READING & ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 1. BOOKS
2. OTHER MATERIALS
On our EGR Stanley C. JENKINS, ‘The Witney & Fairford Branch through time’ (Amberley Publishing, 2013). Also his earlier book - ‘The Fairford Branch: The Witney & East Gloucestershire Railway’ (The Oakwood Press, 1985).
At Wikipedia, the entries for: ‘The East Gloucestershire Railway’ with its links to ‘The Witney & East Gloucestershire Railway’ website and also to ‘The Fairford Branch Line’ website (this last has many fascinating images of Bampton Station and trains passing through it, as well as a photo of the Bampton Station horse-bus, 1908). And there is also a link to the ‘Witney Oxford Transport Group’ with its exciting plans for an OxfordEynsham-Witney-Carterton light railway... (which might one day extend to Bampton? - perhaps in time by 2073 for the 200 anniversary of Bampton’s first railway of 1873?!).
On railways generally Simon BRADLEY, ‘The Railways: Nation, Network and People’ (Profile Books, 2015). Matthew ENGEL, ‘Eleven Minutes Late’ (Pan, 2010). Laurence WATERS, ‘Railways of Oxford’ (Pen & Sword Books, 2020) Christian WOLMAR, ‘Fire and Steam: How the Railways transformed Britain’ (Atlantic Books, 2008). On recent political & social history Matthew ENGEL, ‘The Reign: Life in Elizabeth’s Britain - Part 1, The Way It Was, 19521979’ (Atlantic Books, 2022). By this author David PALFREYMAN, ‘London’s Livery Companies’ (2010) ‘London’s Inns of Court’ (2011) ‘London’s Pall Mall Clubs’ (2019) at Amazon (hard-back, paper-back, Kindle down-load).
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Grateful acknowledgement to Martin Loader at martin@hondawanderer.com for kind permission to reproduce the Bampton Station images from his ‘Fairford Branch Line’ website. Similarly to Laurence Waters for permission to reproduce images from his book as listed above. Thanks to Jo Lewington of the Bampton Archive for (gently) bullying me into undertaking this project. And also appreciation for Tim Gush and Jenny Chaundy who have so skilfully laid out the text and inserted the images for publication using IT expertise way beyond mine
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A Bampton Community Archive publication First published August 2023 www.bamptonarchive.org © The Bampton Archive, 2023
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