Norton Canon on Bryant's map of Herefordshire, 1835

The site was a former railway embankment lying on alluvium.  Immediately to the east is a glacial morraine - the Staunton Morraine - composed of poorly sorted gravels with silts and sands.  The old railway line traversed this feature by means of a cutting.  The underlying geology is Old Red Sandstone, but subsequent glacial deposits overlie this in the area.

The site had been open agricultural land before the construction of the railway in the 1860's. 

The Railways of Herefordshire at their maximum extent.

The Hereford, Hay & Brecon Railway

by Jerry Newby-Vincent

The railway was originally incorporated under an act of 1859.  Under the Brecon & Merthyr Railway (Amalgamation) Act 5th July 1865, power was given to the Brecon & Merthyr Tydfil Junction Railway Company and the Hereford, Hay & Brecon Railway Company to be amalgamated and for issue of shares or stock of the Brecon & Merthyr Tydfil Junction Railway Company to proprietors of the Hereford, Hay & Brecon Railway Company.  This amalgamation was annulled by the Brecon & Merthyr Railway (Arrangements) Act of 1868, and the Hereford, Hay & Brecon Railway Company was reinstated.

Under The Hereford, Hay & Brecon Railway Act of 1869 this company was given fresh powers, and under The Midland Railway Act of 30th July 1874, The Hereford, Hay & Brecon Railway was vested by way of lease in perpetuity in The Midland Railway Company as from 1st July 1874.

Under Section 31 of Midland Railway Act of 25th June 1886, The Hereford, Hay & Brecon Railway Company was to be dissolved and vested in The Midland Railway Company as soon as mortgages and debenture stock of the former company had been exchanged for debenture stock of the Midland Railway Company.

Eventually the Midland Railway Company was amalgamated into London Midland & Scottish Railway Company under the North Western, Midland and West Scottish Group Amalgamation Scheme 1922 dated 30th December 1922.

As authorised by the act of 1859, the HH & B was to stretch 34 miles, but this length was reduced to 27 miles by the truncation of two sections.  That from Three Cocks Junction to Talyllyn Junction was transferred to the Mid Wales Railway and that between Talyllyn and Brecon to the Brecon & Merthyr.

The HH & B bought the Hay Railway (a tramway) in 1860 and adapted three miles for its own route.  The route was built in stages: the nine miles from Hereford to Moorhampton opened in October 1862; a further five miles to Eardisley were completed in June 1863, followed by Eardisley to Hay (seven miles) in July 1864 and the remaining 5½ miles to Three Cocks Junction on 19 September 1864 when a through service began.

The line did not attract the passenger and goods traffic for which its promoters had hoped and it was soon in financial difficulties, from which it was rescued by the Midland Railway, which bought the company in 1874.

The value of the HH & B to the Midland was that it provided a through route to Swansea, although in passenger terms there was little to exploit and from 1874 until 1932 small 0-4-4 tanks valiantly performed trips of 79½ miles in each direction on some of the longest tank locomotive diagrams in Britain.

Rather more important was the exploitation of the route by the LNWR, which it developed for freight between South Wales and Birmingham.  In later years, the single line between Hereford (Moorfields Junction) and Three Cocks was worked by electric train token with crossing stations at Moorhampton (for a passenger and freight train, or two freight trains), and at Eardisley, Hay-on-Wye and Three Cocks.

The passage of the SLS special on 30^th December 1962 did not quite mark the end of the HH & B for it continued to be a through route to South Wales until 4 may 1964 when it was cut back to Eardisley and to Hereford (Brecon Junction) four months later.

The Railway became known as 'The Egg and Bacon Railway' because of the farm produce it used to bring in to Hereford.

The Engineers for the line appear to have originally been a William McCormick of Birkenhead and James Holme of Liverpool.  Thomas Savin of Oswestry then took on responsibilities for completion of the route.  Mr Savin finished the project and was present as the contractor at a meeting of the directors and shareholders at the company's office, 9a, Bridge Street Westminster on 25^th August 1864.  At that meeting the chairman reported that the previous day he and several others had travelled the line throughout its entire length to Brecon.

The line had already been opened as far as Hay on 11^th July.  It had reached Earsdisley some time before and had been due to open to Hay on 1^st April.  Unfortunately the bridge at Whitney had failed to meet with the approval of the government inspector which led to a delay. It had not been until the previous Saturday (9^th July) that it became known in Hay that the line would open on Monday.  It was therefore decided that celebrations would wait until the line was open through to Brecon.

It seems to be this final stage that aroused most interest.  On the 1^st October the Hereford Times commented on the improvement of communication with Hay - 'instead of going to the coach office in Broad-street, and paying down a considerable sum even for a seat on the outside, we have only to go to the Barton Railway station, pay a trifling sum at the little window, receive the ticket courteously rendered, take our seat in the convenient carriages, and in a twinkling we are shaking hands with our friends in Hay'.

On another page of the same edition a reported conversation between two female travellers makes the point vividly - 'in the old coach they charged 10s (50p) and we was travelling all day nearly'.  The journey time was now one hour and the return fare 1s 9d (less then nine pence).

The clergyman and diarist Francis Kilvert often used the line.  Kilvert was a curate at Clyro in Radnorshire, near Hay-on-Wye, for seven years from 1865.  The use that the local people were making of the train is suggested on 28^th April 1870 - 'returned [from Whitney to Hay] by the market train crowded with market people'.

Kilvert's parental home was in Langley Burrel in Wiltshire, and as a consequence his journeys there entailed changing stations at Hereford.  For the 28^th May 1870, he recounts a furious drive on a fly between Barr's Court Station, on one side of town, to Barton Station, on the other.

He was not always a joyful traveller.  On 11^th January 1872 he recorded 'left Langley by the usual early beastly train'.  Perhaps his mood is understandable considering that it was winter and he had just spent a pleasant Christmas break with his family.

Despite the ready availability of rail transport and its acceptance into general use among many sections of the population, not everyone was completely familiar with the longer routes.  On 29^th February 1872 Kilvert recorded ‘there is a general belief among the Clyro and Langley people that I cannot travel from Radnorshire to Wiltshire without going over the sea’.

On Monday 2^nd September that year he finally left Clyro 'As the train went down the valley of the Wye to Hereford I waved my handkerchief to all the old familiar friendly houses'. 

The site on the 1904 OS plan

The top of the embankment before it was removed

Section through the embankment

The old railway bridge

The embankment being removed

The Hereford end of the line in 1930.

The earliest station for the uncompleted line was a temporary one at Moorfields (B on map).  The service was then transferred to Barton station (A) until its closure in 1893.  This necessitated the construction of new lines at C and D in order to give the service access to the remaining Hereford station at Barr's Court (E).

The interpretation of this site, was of course, fairly straightforward.  Essentially it was an embankment, with flanking ditches, which had formed part of the railway between Hereford and Brecon.

The inference that can be drawn from its construction is that the nearest available material was used.  In this case this seems to have been derived from the nearby cutting through the Staunton Morraine between (SO) 3768 4743 and 3825 4720.  The source of the gravel ballast is not known, but again the determinants of distance and convenience would have been decisive. 

Reporting

Unpublished report - The Limes Railway Embankment, Norton Canon, Herefordshire: archaeological survey and monitoring - Jerry Newby-Vincent, Huw Sherlock and P J Pikes.

A copy of this report is held in the reference section of Hereford City Library

This report is available at the Archaeological Data Service site

To view or download the report click here

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Clem Lovell