1853 – The Year the Railways came

By 1841 the lines had reached Gloucester in the form of the Birmingham and Gloucester Railway. In 1844 the Bristol and Gloucester Railway connected Gloucester to Bristol.

These lines were of the standard gauge (then called narrow gauge) of 4 feet 8½ inches, but the Great Western Railway of Isambard Kingdom Brunel used the broad gauge of 7 feet. The broad gauge rails connected Gloucester with London in 1845.

An illustration showing James Clayton’s design for Barton station for the Newport, Abergavenny and Hereford Railway.

Proposals for building a railway connecting Gloucester with Hereford pre-date the construction of the lines connecting Gloucester to Bristol or Birmingham.  These were two plans of 1836: one for a route through Newent and Ledbury and the other for a route through Ross-on-Wye.  Later in the year a plan for connecting Hereford with Shrewsbury was launched.

Nothing came directly of these proposals, but a few years later things began to move again. Royal assent for a line connecting Hereford to Gloucester was given in 1845 and connections to Shrewsbury and to Newport on 2 August 1846.

The Railway connecting Chepstow to Swansea via Newport and Cardiff had opened in June 1850. The railway system was still patchy however - South Wales had not been connected to London until the bridge over the lower Wye at Chepstow was opened in July 1852.

A train steams south from Barton Station, over the Hunderton Bridge towards Abergavenny and Newport

In April 1852 the railway line from Shrewsbury to Ludlow opened and on the 24th the first ever timetable was printed in the Hereford Times with the warning that the times shown were Greenwich Time not the local time.

The cutting for the Shrewsbury and Hereford Railway at Barrs Court, just to the north of Hereford was started August 1852. By the end of September 1852 the first steam locomotive ever seen in Herefordshire was working on the section of the Newport, Hereford and Abergavenny line to the south of the city and the stone piers of the bridge over the Wye at Hunderton were under construction. To the north of the river, the embankment towards the site of Barton Station was under construction.

By the summer of 1853 massive earthmoving was taking place on the outskirts of Hereford as the three lines converged on the city. Inevitably, the scale of the works and the volume of materials encouraged pilfering and gangs of youths were soon busy stealing brass bearings from trucks being used for railway construction. But there were dangers to the young as well as opportunities in this unfamiliar environment and a boy was run over by a tip wagon when playing on the railway workings at the Barton near Hereford

Work on the Hereford, Ross and Gloucester’s line through Eign towards the river was was also well under way. This was being constructed as broad gauge – it was part of the Great Western Railway empire. Oddly, despite this, it was with this line that the Shrewsbury and Hereford was going to connect. Disputes between the railway companies would mean that, despite the inconvenience and frustration of its citizens, Hereford was to get two railway stations – at opposite ends of the city.

The Hunderton Bridge now carries cyclists and pedestrians over the Wye

The final brick in the tunnel under Dinmore Hill on the Shrewsbury and Hereford line was ceremoniously laid on 16th September. It had taken 2½ years to build and used 3¼ million bricks all made on the hill and from the north end of the tunnel.

In mid October the first locomotive arrived at Barrs Court over Shrewsbury and Hereford rails and on 29th October the first passenger train arrived at a temporary station at Barrs Court. This carried the directors of the Hereford and Shrewsbury railway and their guests. They had failed to make any formal arrangement with the city and were disappointed that there were no celebrations to mark the event

The Banquet in the Shire Hall to celebrate the opening of the Railway. This was an affair for the gentry and tradesmen of Hereford.
The navvies were also catered for. At the old foundry in Friars Street they ate beef, pork and lamb and were given a quart of stout each.

The formal opening of the railway system in Hereford was arranged for Tuesday 6th December which was declared a local holiday. At 1pm a train of 31 carriages drawn by three locomotives drew into Hereford from Newport. It carried 640 passengers and was watched by crowd estimated to number between twenty and thirty thousand people, many more than the population of Hereford at the time.

A parade through the decorated city streets met the train and a civic banquet was held in the Shire Hall. The navvies who built the line were feasted at the old foundry in Friar Street and balls were held at both the Shire Hall and the old town hall.

28th January 1854 saw the first special train to pass through Hereford. It was carrying 250 Mormons from South Wales to Liverpool to embark, said the Hereford Times disapprovingly ‘for their Paradise of polygamy and the bowie knife beside the Great Salt Lake.’ The Hereford Times reported that ‘the ordinary trains were much delayed in the early part of the day.’

A southbound train at Barton Station

The railway bridge at Eign at Hereford was built to carry the Hereford to Gloucester line over the Wye

Work on the Hereford to Worcester line had stopped and the workmen were left to find other means of support. Nearly 150 men, many with wives and families, were found employment at the workhouse and paid for by the city rate payers – 9d per day ‘with a liberal allowance of bread.’ On the Stoke Edith estate to the east of Hereford, Lady Emily Foley, a keen supporter of railways, employed large numbers of navvies on coppice work until such time that railway work could begin again. 

The line was opened into Hereford in September 1861 via a junction with the Shrewsbury and Hereford line at Shelwick just north of the city.

Barrs Court Station in the 1920s

Three stations were built between Hereford and Ledbury. The middle of these was built at Tarrington, although it was called Stoke Edith Station. From here trains ran regularly to Hereford and Worcester and the Great Western Railway would run 'hop-picker's specials' to bring in the workforce needed to pick the hops which were a major crop in the area. From 1885, passengers could change at Ledbury Junction Station for Ledbury Town, Newent and Gloucester.

It was this final stage that aroused most interest. On the 1st 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'.

The Hay and Brecon train at Barton Station

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 than nine pence).

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

Kilvert's parental home was at Langley in Wiltshire, and as a consequence his journeys entailed changing stations at Hereford. For the 28th May 1870, he recounts a furious drive on a fly - a light horse-drawn vehicle which would have been waiting for hire at the station - from Barr's Court Station, on one side of town, to Barton Station, on the other.

He was not always a joyful traveller. On 11th 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 29th 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’.

A section of the disused Hereford to Brecon railway line near Norton Canon in Herefordshire in 2001. This embankment has since been removed.

On Monday 2nd 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 6 mile long Kington and Presteigne Railway took four difficult years to build, from the cutting of the first turf in 1872, while the 19 mile Golden Valley line between Pontrilas and Hay-on-Wye took 13 years. Work in this line began in 1876. Opened from Pontrilas to Dorstone in 1881, the final section to Hay opened in 1889.

A line designed to connect Leominster to Worcester through Bromyard took even longer to build. This was opened between Worcester and Yearsett, three miles short of Bromyard, in 1874, but it was not until 1877 that it reached Bromyard itself. A line from Leominster to Steens Bridge opened in 1884, but it was another 13 years before the final section was opened to Bromyard.

Stations in Herefordshire in 1903 (plus Monmouth. Monmouthshire; Newent, Gloucestershire; Ludlow. Shropshire; Hay-on-Wye, Breconshire)
In 2003 only Hereford, Leominster. Ledbury. Colwall and Ludlow were still open.

Hereford engine sheds in the early 1960s. These ‘pannier’ tank engines were the mainstay of shunting on the old Great Western Railway and its successor – the Western Region of British Railways. These could have been seen working at the various marshalling yards around Hereford.

The 1960s saw the closure of all but two of the county’s railway lines. Only the north to south line through Hereford from Shrewsbury to Newport and the line from Worcester to Hereford remain.

All over the county the small stations closed, including most of those on the remaining lines.

At the beginning of the 21st century only Colwall, Ledbury, Leominster and Hereford retained railway stations.
 

The railways and stations in Herefordshire in 2007.
The black squares are closed stations and the black lines closed tracks.

Another preserved locomotive at Hereford Station.
Number 4079 Pendennis Castle was built in 1924. After steam engines stopped being used on British railways, Pendennis Castle worked special excursions trains for a while. The locomotive was sold in 1977 to an Australian steam railway

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