KINGSWOOD AND THE CHIPSTEAD VALLEY RAILWAY

The railway was late arriving at Kingswood. By the end of the 19th century most places had been connected to the national network, but it did not reach Kingswood until 1897. Although only twenty miles from central London, Kingswood, Tadworth and Walton-on-the-Hill were remote hamlets nestling in rural countryside on the top of the North Downs.

The person responsible for changing this isolation was the local MP Cosmo Bonsor of Kingswood Warren. His original proposal to connect the district was to extend the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway from the existing Epsom Downs Station to one running through the Chipstead Valley to be built by the South Eastern Railway. To achieve this he became elected as a director of the SER in 1894, eventually becoming its chairman in 1898 with the intention of joining the two lines. However there were major topographical difficulties in constructing a railway which would link Epsom Downs with the Chipstead Valley. Without major engineering works such as extensive tunnelling, the line would have been unable to traverse the summit of the North Downs. Since the primary motivation for the scheme was to take advantage of the traffic generated by the racecourse – at that time the Derby was the biggest sporting event in the country – the line also needed to be more accessible for race-goers than the existing LBSCR Epsom Downs station. What Bonsor really wanted however, was to construct a branch line along the Chipstead valley to carry agricultural produce and provide better access to London from Kingswood, Tadworth and Walton. So as well as providing a more convenient way of reaching Epsom racecourse, he also had an eye on the development potential for high status housing in the bucolic Surrey Hills, accessible by a direct line accessible to the City of London. The Chipstead Valley railway built by the SER between 1897 and 1900 achieved this aim.

The influence of Bonsor as chairman of the SER can be seen in the design of Kingswood Station as the most elegant on the Chipstead Valley line. Originally called Kingswood and Burgh Heath it still has an extensive canopy attached to the three storey station house on the Up Platform. This it is said to have had an open air terrace as part of the first floor tea room which remained until the 1920’s. The evidence for this is the railings around its perimeter as shown in Figure 1. The drive from his house at Kingswood Warren led directly to the station, running through a roadway behind the Down Platform. Bonsor’s coachman sheltered his horse and carriage to collect him from the train in the space which still exists under the road bridge.

A train can be seen approaching in the far distance with the road bridge carrying Waterhouse Lane, a semaphore signal on the left and the signal box to the right on the up platform. The railings around the station canopy are clearly visible.

The railway of the early 1900’s was very different from today. Trains were steam hauled requiring ancillary facilities such as coal yards, water tanks, turntables and maintenance sheds. Passenger trains consisted of small non-corridor coaches and goods trains brought coal and building materials to a two siding yard at Kingswood now occupied by the car park behind the Up Platform. Traffic was controlled by semaphore signals operated from a series of signal boxes; the Kingswood one can be seen to the right of Figure 1. In 1900 Kingswood Station was briefly the terminus of the line when it then moved to Tadworth once engineering work had been completed on the Kingswood and Hoppy tunnels. Initially, trains only progressed to Tattenham Corner on race days and for special excursions.

In 1928 all this changed with the arrival of electrification. The advantages of electric traction over steam are that it allows trains to accelerate and decelerate more quickly, combines motive power with passenger accommodation, is regarded as cleaner and dispenses with the need for coal depots, turntables, run around loops and long periods for the preparation and maintenance of engines. Hence electrification meant that much of the infrastructure needed to support steam traction was swept away although goods traffic was still hauled by steam until the 1960’s as was the annual visit of the Royal Train to Tattenham Corner for the Derby which was pulled by a steam locomotive until 1963.

In the 1920s and 30s housing development, encouraged by electrification, started in Kingswood. The Chipstead valley railway served, ‘pleasant undulating country soon to be populated by comfortable villas’. The developer Costains bought Kingswood Warren in the mid 1920’s. Detached houses costing between £1250 and £5000 were marketed as spacious properties within easy reach of central London, situated in what were call ‘non-suburbanised’ estates in beautiful countryside with a selection of golf courses on the door step. Consequently, the line became focused on commuters rather than race traffic. Following the introduction of electric trains, the platform at Kingswood Station was extended to cater for the increased number of passengers and a footbridge now linked the up and down platforms. A gradual decline in freight traffic resulted in closure of the goods yard in 1962.

The Chipstead Valley railway was the reason why Kingswood, Tadworth and Walton changed from remote settlements to well connected commuter communities. Their economies based on agriculture, mainly sheep farming and dependent on horse drawn transport, evolved, beginning at the start of the twentieth century, to how we see them today. Bonsor’s vision of a prosperous residential area surrounded by beautiful countryside and linked to the capital was achieved by the Chipstead Valley railway.

Richard Harris

Further reading

N. Owen, The Tattenham Corner Branch, Oakwood Press, 1978.

V Mitchell and K Smith, London Suburban Railways: Caterham and Tattenham Corner, Middleton Press 1994.

A.A. Jackson, The Railway in Surrey, Atlantic, 1999.

A.A. Jackson, Semi-Detached London, Wild Swan, 1991.