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Various Nineteenth Century Proposals for Railway Developments passing through the Parish of Benson.

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Summary

The earliest proposals were for trunk railways, London and Bristol (1824), Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton - Maidenhead extension (1845). Both proposals were made in boom periods and foundered in financial crises which followed soon after.

Subsequent proposals were for single-track branch lines; Wallingford and Watlington (1864), Ewelme Railway (1880), Wallingford and Watlington (1891), and Didcot and Watlington (1898). Only the W&W (1864) made any progress, completing the Cholsey-Wallingford section just as a financial crisis peaked. The W&W could not raise funds for the line to Watlington.

This prompted the landed interests in and to the east of Watlington, to promote the Watlington and Princes Risborough Railway (1869). The last three proposals, ER (1880), W&W (1891), and D&W (1898) all derived from iniatives in connection with the W&PR.

London and Bristol (1824)

The first railway boom came in 1824 and Bristol was a focus for many railway projects. Perhaps outstanding was the London and Bristol Rail Road Company, both on account of its scale and because its support was drawn from the commercial upper-crust of Bristol. The preliminary meeting, held on 28 December 1824, was chaired by Thomas Wilson, one of the Bristol MPs, and, when the company was formed early in January 1825 with a nominal capital of £1,500,000, the chairman was Richard Hart Davis, the other Bristol MP. The twelve-man board of directors also included Sir John Lubbock and John Loudon McAdam, the great road surveyor who planned the route.

From Bristol to Wallingford it followed the line later chosen by Brunel, but by-passing Bath, because the L&B planned to carry only goods traffic. East of Wallingford, McAdam surveyed the Thames Valley route following the west bank to Reading and then the south bank to Brentford on the tidal Thames where goods could be taken forward by barge.

Alternatively, and probably without survey, McA also suggested a more direct route cutting out the Reading dog-leg by crossing the Thames just to the north of Wallingford and running through Ewelme, Turville, and Burnham to Brentford. There is no railway map of the L&B but it seems likely that, after bridging the Thames, McA's alternative route would have passed between Crowmarsh Battle farm and the site of Howbery Park, crossing what is now the airfield to pass to the south of Ewelme. We do not know of any local stations and it seems quite possible that none were planned. The railway might have operated like a carrier, stopping to load or unload goods at the customer's convenience.

Within a few months of its formation in 1825 the company faced the worst financial crisis for three-quarters of a century. It occurred too soon for any decision to be made on the very hilly Ewelme route. In the Bristol area not one of the proposed railways survived although it was not until June 1826 that the L&B finally abandoned the project. Shareholders lost five shillings (25p) in the pound.

Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton - Maidenhead extension (1845)

Now known as the Cotswold Line, the OWW was designed to serve the merchants and manufacturers of the west midlands, connecting with the Grand Junction Railway at Wolverhampton for Liverpool and Manchester, with the Severn barge traffic at Worcester, and with the Great Western at Oxford for London and the south-east.

Like McAdam, and with more reason, the OWW saw the problem of the Reading dog-leg and proposed the Oxford-Maidenhead extension to carry their goods on their own metals to a connection with the GWR well to the east of Reading.

The mid 1840s railway boom was the biggest and wildest. Called the Railway Mania, the principal player, George Hudson, a wealthy York draper, was known as the Railway King. The next financial crisis brought the inevitable crash, taking down many proposed lines, and forcing Hudson to fly the country to escape his creditors.

The OWW survived the crash and was eventually completed in the mid 1850s but its Maidenhead extension sank without trace. So much so that it is not mentioned in the standard history of the OWW. There is limited evidence about the proposed route but it is clear that the line would have run through the fields in several local parishes without going the village centres. After Newington it would have crossed three fields in Benson, a short distance through Berrick Salome and a longer stretch through Ewelme.

The three fields in Benson parish must have been to the north of the common fields. The farmers were named as:

1		John Gibbs Hutchins (with Thomas and William Hutchins) 2	Thomas Weller 3	Robert Aldworth Newton

All three were also recorded as holding land in Ewelme which would have been crossed by the OWW.

Wallingford and Watlington (1864)

"Despite the passing in 1864 of the Wallingford and Watlington Railway Act which provided for a line running through Benson, Berrick Salome, Ewelme, Brightwell Baldwin and Cuxham, the venture came to nothing..."

In fact the railway came to Wallingford. The project was initiated by Wallingford businessmen who, by 1860, were becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the condition of the Reading turnpike between Wallingford and the GWR station at Moulsford. The station, known as Wallingford Road, was situated immediately to the south-east of the narrow overbridge on the A329.

In 1861, a plan was produced for a branch line from the GWR at Cholsey to join the Wycombe Railway at Princes Risborough. The line would have gone via Wallingford, Benson, Watlington and Chinnor.

In the following year the burgesses changed their minds and selected a more modest proposal for a branch line only as far as Wallingford. A Bill for this project was submitted to Parliament, in November 1862, for consideration in the 1863 session.

By February 1863 they had changed their minds again and withdrew the Bill before it came up for discussion, planning to replace it later in the year with the proposal for the Wallingford and Watlington Railway. The Bill promoting the W&W was submitted to Parliament in November 1863.

In January 1864, a public meeting chaired by the Mayor, Mr T E Field was held in Wallingford to discuss the scheme. Mr T B Greenwood put the case for bringing the railway to Benson, saying "...if there was one place more than another that deserved to have the benefit of a railway it was Benson. Before the railway system commenced, 34 coaches went through Benson night and day, and when the railway was established these were stopped and the place was consequently much injured...". In fact Mr Greenwood was so very partisan that he argued against extending the line beyond Benson, but found no support for this idea. The meeting unanimously approved the entire scheme.

Five months later, in June 1864, the W&W Act was passed. As was customary in railway law, the Cholsey to Wallingford section was termed 'Railway No 1' and Wallingford to Watlington 'Railway No 2'. This practice allowed work to start on the first section while capital was still being raised to complete the railway.

Although the proposed line would have passed through land in all the five parishes listed above, only two intermediate stations were planned, one at Benson and the other between Brightwell Baldwin and Cuxham, as well as a terminus sited opposite the church on the north-west edge of Watlington, between the B4009 and the Oxford road.

The line would have crossed the Thames about a quarter of a mile north of Benson Lock and continued on an embankment to bridge the Oxford turnpike at its junction with Littleworth Road. Benson station would have been up on the embankment like a smaller version of Cholsey station. It would have been very conveniently placed for transferring goods to and from both road and river transport. From Benson station, the line would have passed just north of what is now Sunnyside and Sands Way, over Porthill and across the fields about a quarter of a mile south of Roke before climbing the low hill to Brightwell Baldwin and Cuxham.

That the venture did not come to Benson was due to a combination of power politics and financial crisis. Railway No 1 was to have started at a junction with the GWR in Cholsey and ended at Wallingford station just south of the Wantage turnpike. Initially it was expected that the line would be in business before the end of 1865. Unfortunately the GWR changed its mind. Instead of allowing the branch line trains to run onto the existing main line at the junction in Cholsey, the GWR asked the W&W to build a new track laid alongside the main lines into a new bay platform at Wallingford Road station. And because the W&W had an agreement with the GWR whereby the latter would provide rolling stock and operating staff, they had to comply. This meant widening a 60 foot deep cutting and extending a brick-arched overbridge between Cholsey and Wallingford Road station, and laying another mile of track. The company's capital was seriously eroded and the start of operations was delayed until July 1866.

In 1865 the total cost of Railway No 2 had been estimated as £31,600:

Wallingford to Benson (including a 3 arch viaduct)	£15,452 Benson to Watlington	£16,148

Unfortunately, in May 1866 the financial crisis came to a climax; Overend and Gurney, known as the bankers' bank, crashed. Gladstone raised the Bank Rate to 10%; but lending virtually dried up. Railways were usually seen as safe investments (as are all public utilities) and a return of 4% on a railway investment would be very good. No railway could afford to pay 10%. The W&W put Railway No 2 on hold.

This was a severe blow to Watlington which urgently needed improved transport; unlike Benson it had access neither to the river nor to the turnpike. Fortunately for the town, the Earl of Macclesfield lived at Shirburn Castle just to the east of Watlington. As a major landowner he and his farming tenants needed access to the railway system.

By chance, while most of the land between Wallingford and Watlington belonged to working farmers, to the east were large estates owned by gentry who could afford to invest, even when it was not easy to raise capital on the markets.

The Earl acted while the W&W waited for better times; the Watlington and Princes Risborough Railway Act was passed in 1869. The directors of the W&W knew they were beaten; they had to approach parliament for powers to abandon Railway No 2.

Ewelme Railway (1880)

The reason for this project remains unclear; the watercress industry in the Watlington area certainly needed efficient transport to satisfy demand in the Midlands but the industry did not develop in Ewelme until after the demise of the corn mill early in the 1880s. Watercress requires a shallow fast-flowing stream while the mill pool would have been deep and still. The brook was dug out to its present broad shallow format in the late 1880s

However it is certain that parliamentary approval was granted in 1880 for the Ewelme Railway to connect end-on to the W&PR at Watlington Station, passing to the north of the town and south of Cuxham and Brightwell Baldwin, then turning south below the low range of hills to cross what is now the B4009 just to the east of the Cottesmore Lane junction, with a terminus in the field bordered by these roads.

No works seem to have been undertaken and it is fair to conclude that the promoters found it impossible to raise the necessary capital during an agricultural depression which extended over decades.

MacDermot does not mention the Ewelme Railway which suggests that no approach was ever made to the GWR although the ER would have depended on that company to provide rolling stock and operating staff as did the W&PR. Holden and Karau and Turner(CBL) also ignore the ER, although Holden says 'proposals to create a through railway by reviving the Watlington to Wallingford section were made from time to time', and K&T(CBL) record that at a board meeting of the GWR held in February 1882 to discuss, inter alia, the takeover of the W&PR, Mr Toogood asked the company to co-operate in building a railway from Watlington to Didcot, or to Wallingford, or to Reading. The company declined.

Wallingford and Watlington (1891)

Little is known about this proposal because the promoters did not attempt to obtain parliamentary approval and the statutory documentation was never prepared. It is likely that the proposed railway would have followed the route authorised in 1864 for Railway No 2 of the original W&W except that, east of Cuxham, it would have run north of Watlington to link end-on at the W&PR Station.

In October 1891 the Mayor, Mr Hawkins chaired a public meeting in the Lamb Hotel, Wallingford, to discuss the project.

Holden wrote: "Mr James Wilkinson, engineer of the International Construction Co, asked whether the Great Western would consider working such a line, on the basis of guaranteeing 3% on capital cost estimated at £50,000. The Directors were 'unable to entertain the proposal'."

By 1891, the GWR owned both branches, having acquired the Wallingford in 1872 and the W&PR in 1883. In each case the 'victim' was in serious financial difficulties and the GWR was able to acquire the assets at a small fraction of the initial cost. Perhaps the Directors of the GWR thought the ICC appeared too businesslike to provide a similar bargain?

Didcot and Watlington (1898)

The D&W (Didcot and Watlington Light Railway) was a product of the final railway boom. The concept of the light railway had been recognised in Railway Acts as early as the 1860s, at a time when the main line network had very largely been completed and most new railways were branch lines. Unfortunately the concept was not formalised in law until the end of the century and legal requirements appropriate to main line traffic continued to be imposed on branches. A main line locomotive needed to be large and powerful enough to haul a dozen carriages or forty plus goods trucks over long distances at 60 mph and needed track which could accommodate the stresses imposed. By contrast branch line locomotives were smaller, loads lighter, speeds lower, and stops more frequent. The Light Railways Act 1896 finally recognised the difference by establishing the Light Railway Commission to control the building of branch lines to less demanding standards, and by removing the requirement for a separate Act of Parliament for each new branch. In 1898 the LRC authorised the D&W and 87 other new light railways. The Didcot and Watlington Light Railway would have left Didcot northbound along the Oxford branch to avoid the Sinodun Hills before turning east to bridge the Thames and cross the Oxford turnpike north of Dorchester, then going south-east past Warborough to Benson and onward via Brightwell and Cuxham and north of Watlington before connecting at the W&PR station.

Although not included in the original D&W scheme, the Wallingford extension was already under consideration in 1898. In January 1899 'Light Railway Commissioners held a public enquiry at the Junction Hotel, Didcot on Thursday respecting the proposed extension of the authorised line from Didcot and Watlington to Wallingford'.

Mr Coward, representing the promoters, explained that the proposed Wallingford extension was in fulfilment of a promise given to the GWR when the D&W was authorised. He said that the extension would connect Wallingford and Cholsey to Watlington, Princes Risborough and the whole of the Great Central Railway system. It would also provide farmers over a wide area with access to Reading market.

The Mayor of Wallingford, Mr B W Hilliard, strongly supported the scheme, as did the only Benson resident who spoke. Mr William Newton of Crowmarsh Battle, land and estate agent, said the railway would bring benefit to all local citizens and particularly to agriculture because 'A great deal of produce [is] grown in the district, and instead of farmers having to cart it to Wallingford or Watlington, this new line would come in very useful.' He also emphasised the advantages for the Ewelme watercress industry.

Mr Meeke, the promoters' engineer, spoke briefly of the bridge 'which consisted of two arches, 62 yards long altogether, with a clear headway of 17 feet above the water', He pointed out that it matched the 17ft headway at Wallingford bridge. This concluded the case for the promoters.

Mr J Horne Payne QC appeared for the objectors, instructed by Messrs Hedges and Marshall who were acting for Mr C Fuller of Rush Court, Mr J Badcock and Mr W Greet. Mr Payne 'at once proceeded to address the Commissioners. People in London, he said, were anxious nowadays to find a place where they would not be worried by railways, just to get the repose they wished for'. He went on to argue that the line was not required; 'There was already ample train service for the district'. This appears to have been his entire contribution.

Mr Fuller made a substantial speech explaining the damage likely to be caused to Rush Court farm. Mr Bousfield (Warborough) also objected at length, mentioning the plight of river-loving people, and explaining that he 'had had experience with two railways but they had been so unremunerative that they were sold'. Other objectors, whose contributions were not recorded, were Mr Badcock and Mr Greet whose concern was with the beauty of the river, Mr W C Dodd (Wallingford) and Mr W R Cozens (Brightwell). Mr Badcock admitted writing a letter to the "Daily Mail".

The Commissioners 'reserved their decision re the extension to Wallingford' at the time and issued authorisation later in 1899. Subsequently, the promoters failed to make progress with any part of the project, probably being unable to raise the capital, and when they approached the Light Railway Commissioners early in 1903 for permission to exercise compulsory purchase powers, they were refused as the Commissioners considered that they were unlikely ever to complete the railway.

Didcot and Watlington (1898) - an alternative view

'The high priority given to the river amenities as a social asset to the place was shown in 1899 when Benson was offered and refused its own railway. It was posed that a light railway should be constructed from Wallingford to Benson crossing the Thames just above Benson lock. Unfortunately this would have necessitated the building of a low and unsightly iron bridge and Benson refused the suggestion with the plea that the bridge would interfere with the sailing on the river.'

The above extract from The Ditmas History of Benson shows how far Miss Ditmas was misled by the article in the Daily Mail which appeared on 3 February 1899 and from which she quoted the following paragraph: 'The river at this point is one of the few excellent sailing spots remaining, and the bridge, it is said, cannot be made high enough to obviate the lowering of sails each time it is reached. The population of Wallingford is only about 3000, and of Benson 1000. The proposed railway will only be a mile and three-quarters in length and many persons maintain that the benefits proposed can in no way compensate for the disadvantages.'

It would be interesting to know whether the Daily Mail article originated with Mr J Badcock. �Sources and Excuses Adapted from paper emailed to PDJC 020212

London and Bristol (1824):

Primary sources are Notices published in The Times in December 1824, Morning Chronicle in January 1825, and Bristol Mercury in June 1826 identified on Grace's Guide and found via the library's Reference Online. Secondary sources are MacDermot's "History of the GWR" (Vol I) and Reader's "Macadam"; both rehash the Notices but include very little more information. Neither book includes references.

I feel sure that there must be more information available in Bristol which needs to be unearthed. Without this, the route of the line crossing the river at Wallingford remains to some extent conjectural.

Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton - Maidenhead branch (1845):

Primary sources are the Statutory documents (map book and book of land holdings affected by parish) but the map book is in such poor condition that I was unable to hazard a guess at the route. It may be that there is a similar map book in other archives. I shall investigate the possibilities. Secondary sources: none available. The seminal text, S C Jenkins's "Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway" does not mention the Maidenhead branch.

Wallingford and Watlington (1864):

Primary sources are the Statutory documents and reports of meetings in 1864 at Wallingford and Watlington in Jackson's Oxford Journal. The Reading Mercury archive, which has recently been digitized but is not yet available on Reference Online, may offer more information as may the Thame Gazette. Secondary sources are "The Wallingford Branch"(WB)and "Country Branch Line"(CBL) both by Karau and Turner, and Holden's "The Watlington Branch". None of these includes an index or references. About 25 years ago The Bunk, magazine of the Cholsey and Wallingford Railway, published a series of articles on the history of the railway by the then editor, David Clifford, which may provide more information though I have only seen the first which largely is a rehash of the first pages of Holden. MacDermot makes only a very brief mention of the W&W.

Ewelme Railway (1880):

Primary sources are the Statutory documents. There must be press reports which I have not yet found. Again the Reading Mercury and Thame Gazette are likely sources. Secondary sources: None. Not mentioned in MacDermot's "History of the GWR" (Vol II), nor in Karau and Turner(CBL), nor in Holden.

Wallingford and Watlington (1891) - International Construction Co:

No primary source. Statutory documents were not lodged with the County, presumably because the GWR rejected proposal at early stage. Secondary sources are brief paragraphs in Karau and Turner(CBL) and Holden.

Didcot and Watlington (1898):

Primary sources are the Statutory documents and Jackson's Oxford Journal's report of the public hearing about the Benson branch early in 1899. There is also the Daily Mail piece quoted by Miss Ditmas. There must be more press comment; again the Reading Mercury is a likely source. Secondary sources are Karau and Turner(CBL) and Ditmas.

Summary:

Clearly there is much still to find.