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Bampton Community Archive, Autumn 2023 Exhibition
BAMPTON
AND ITS RAILWAY 1873 -1962 An exhibition by DAVID PALFREYMAN, OBE FRSA MA (Oxon)
An exhibition celebrating the history of the Bampton and Brize Norton Railway I was honoured to be asked to write this short history of Bampton in the Railway Age as a contribution to the growing Bampton Archive. I can’t claim any special knowledge of railways nor to having undertaken lengthy and deep research - but I was fortunate in soon identifying lots of interesting images and the expertise of others so as to be able to tell the story of the arrival and (sad) departure of the railway that served Bampton for almost a century. I hope you enjoy reading about the Oxford - Witney Fairford railway and its Bampton Station. 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 ‘Railways of Oxford’ (Pen & Sword Books, 2020). 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.
David Palfreyman www.bamptonarchive.org
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TRAVELLING IN STYLE
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 (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). 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 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’?
An early GWR passenger bus.
The Bampton Voiturette
W Payne & Son Great Western Railway Agent for Bampton and Lechlade
An early GWR truck
The GWR crest GWR Parcel van
A charabanc
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JOURNEY PLANNING
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MAPPING THE RAILWAY
The GWR eradicated - becoming British Rail in 1970’s
British Railways - Travel by Train Map 1951
Stations
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GLORIOUS AGE OF STEAM AND OF THOMAS THE TANK ENGINE!
A service to Witney and Fairford waits to depart from the down platform at Oxford, hauled by GWR Metropolitan Class 2-4-OT. No 3585 in around 1934 (Great Western Trust)
A Dean ‘3232’ class 2-4-0 stands on the ‘back siding’ at Witney with a blanket special; these seasonal workings often brought unusual motive power onto the lines.
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PEOPLE & PASSENGERS
Fairford Signals Training
Travelling in style
Navvies taking a break from working on the line
Suited train crew ready to board
Paddington Station packed with travellers
Passengers waiting to board the train at Bampton
Waiting on the platform at Oxford Station
GWR 7400 No. 7412 at Witney with an Oxford-Fairford service in 1962, while the driver exchanges the single-line tablet with the porter-signalman (Ben-Brooksbank)
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LOCAL STATIONS
Alvescot Station
Bampton and Brize Norton Station
Fairford Station Architects drawing of Bampton and Brize Norton Station Bampton and Brize Norton Station 1937
Bampton and Brize Norton Station pre war
Rattling along!
Plenty of parking at the station
Witney Station Signal Box
Witney Station
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LO C A L STAT IO N S
South Leigh Halt
Eynsham Station
Fairford Station
Oxford Station 1965
Lechlade Station
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FLYING VISIT!
On 28 November 1946 an Avro York MW168 crashed onto the tracks at Bampton - oops more training required!
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THE END OF THE LINE
Extract from ‘Bampton the Way it Was’ by Freda Bradley Copies of this book available to purchase from Bampton Community Archive
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.
Brize Norton Shed
Closure notice 1962
A view of the yard full of withdrawn locomotives taken on 1st January 1966. An ex LMS 8F No. 48287 is seen passing on the main line with an up Esso oil train. (A.E. Doyle)
Views of Bampton and Brize Norton derelict station
Overbridge No.15 Bampton and Brize Norton
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MEMORIES & ANECDOTES
BULLYING
SUGAR BEET
BOMBS
It wasn’t always pleasurable experiences, that some passengers had, for their daily commute on the train!
My first memories of the station were way back in the early/mid 1940’s. Farmers were encouraged as part of the war effort to grow Sugar Beet. A product that required a lot of human effort to grow. As well as men, a great number of Bampton’s women were involved in the growing and harvesting of the crops. This provided them with an income when money was short and their contribution was a tremendous help in feeding the nation.
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.
My father recounted to me how he used to travel daily on the train from Alvescot to Witney Grammar School in the mid to late 1920’s and the tales of the bullying that took place by the bigger boys on the train is quite shocking. Perhaps, no more so than currently, as on school buses but one would hope so! He was too scared to tell the headteacher because the perpetrators would have been in deep trouble and that meant the cane would have been involved! DC
RABBITS GALORE I was giving one of my talks to a group in Kidlington about ‘Growing up in Bampton’, after which a man came up to me and said “ I used to drive Goods Trains in Bampton Station”. He then went on to tell me how when they left Witney and got to the little Bridge at Curbridge they would stop their train and go into a little wood next to the line and set a load of traps to catch the Rabbits that were in abundance, this was when Rabbits were the mainstay of our diets. They would then go down the line all the way to Fairford dropping off and picking up Wagons as they went. Come the evening of their return, when they got to the Bridge at Curbridge they would stop the train, empty the traps of Rabbits and make their way back to Oxford. This was fine until one cold and frosty day they stopped, loaded the rabbits, got back onto the train to continue their homeward journey, when to their horror they found that the train wouldn’t move. They hadn’t realised that this part of the line was on an incline and the frost had iced up the tracks and the wheels failed to grip the rails. So they had to go back down the hill into Bampton Station, give an excuse to the Station Master and go full steam ahead back up the hill at a good speed to overcome the icy track. DR
BRIGHT LIGHTS OF WITNEY To get to the bright lights of Witney we used to catch the train. We would cycle over to the station from home and buy a return trip to take us into the cinema for a night out. I remember the local football team using the train to travel to away matches in Witney and Eynsham. CW
At harvest time the beet were pulled, banged together to knock the dirt off and placed in rows. Next came the dangerous job of chopping the tops off at a designated point, one inch from the crown, with a machete type chopper. Our ladies were extremely skilled and highly respected in the fields with a machete in one hand and a sugar beet in the other. The beet then being placed in heaps ready to load onto the tractor and trailers. Here they would wait until the Government issued the farmers with a permit allowing them the use of the 15 ton railway truck at their nearest station. This was usually Bampton, though sometimes it could be Alvescot. Now this was where the farmers ‘charm offensive’ would begin. If the staff at the station, including the station master, Mr Johns, were amenable, they would get your designated wagon shunted into the dock for easy loading. The dock was basically the concrete plinth that formed part of the general platform. This meant that we could shovel the Sugar Beet onto the Wagon which was the same height as our trailers. If, on the other hand, the staff were unable or just unwilling to provide such a facility and your ‘government approved wagon‘ was parked in the goods yard then you had to throw the beet another six feet higher, a very tiresome job, to get them into the wagon. It certainly taught me from a very early age that if you wanted cooperation, then make sure to call people in authority, no matter what their rank, SIR!! Sugar Beet was grown and needed transporting to the factory well after the Station closed, so from the 1960’s Stan Sheppard a local Haulier took our Harvested Beet by road to the factory at Kidderminster in Worcestershire. A long and difficult haul. DR
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. 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 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
COUNCIL BIKES For school children from Aston, Clanfield and other villages close by, going to school by train to Witney, Oxfordshire County Council provided bicycles to enable children to cycle to the station. Brize Norton children did not get a bicycle because they were close enough to the station to get there by their own means. CW
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MEMORIES & ANECDOTES TRAVEL TO WITNEY SCHOOLS 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 Technical College (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. 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. 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: “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)
ON TRAINS .... In August 1952 I qualified as an officer and pilot in the RAF. We finished our great day with a graduation ball in the officers mess which I attended with June, my girlfriend at the time but subsequently my wife of nearly 69 years! On the morning after the ball I collected June from the house of my flying instructor and we taxied to the small railway station at Lakenheath. The mid-morning train duly steamed in. Only June, myself and one young man climbed aboard. Our aim was to travel cross-country to West Oxfordshire, finishing our journey on the ‘Bampton Flyer’ which usually arrived at Brize Norton and Bampton station at 10.30pm. Travelling cross-country from Norfolk to West Oxfordshire was a particularly tedious business. We had to change trains and wait at Ely, the same at Cambridge and then at Oxford before catching the ‘Flyer’. After a slow but uneventful journey we arrived in Bampton at 10.30pm as planned. Only one other traveller got off at Bampton. It was the same young man who had boarded with us at Lakenheath. We had booked a taxi from the station and the young man joined us as a guest.We learned that he was born and brought up in a ‘Squaffers’House’ within the extended boundary of RAF Feltwell and was on his way, as a young soldier, to serve at the Royal Signals Corps Unit at Weald. Some years later I was enjoying a drink at the Jubilee pub in Bampton and related this experience to Les Thomas, the landlord. A drinker near by obviously overheard and sidled up to me and said .. “I was the man who travelled with you from East Anglia. I now live in these parts as I courted and married a girl from Lew” Can anyone beat that double coincidence? GT
CATCHING THE TRAIN.. 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 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 pre-fabricated wartime station at Black Bourton for some 45 minutes as the down-train, 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 GT bedraggled.
BAMPTON R A I LW AY EXHIBITION
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THE FUTURE OF THE RAILWAY A £161m railway station upgrade at Oxford Station has now begun and is scheduled to take more than two years. A new entrance will be built at the station (including a 4m-wide cycle path and footway) and a new platform. Botley Road bridge will be replaced, with the road lowered to enable standard double-decker buses to pass underneath.
A NEW WITNEY RAILWAY STATION? A new station has been proposed for reopening, mainly on a site to the south of the town with a potential park and ride scheme, as part of a wider project to restore the railway to Carterton via Witney and Eynsham. The first part of this transport plan is the construction of a new Park and Ride at Eynsham which is now underway.
Architectural impressions of the new Oxford Station, the construction of which is now underway.
And one day, extending to Bampton?