Captain Peel's Railway,

A poster advertising a public meeting to decide proceedings on the opening day of the Sandy & Potton Railway

The railways originally came to Potton on 9 Nov 1857 when the Sandy & Potton Railway opened. It was more commonly known as Captain Peel's Railway after its creator Captain Sir William Peel VC. It was the fifth railway to be built in and ran for just three miles between, as the name suggests, Sandy and Potton. Captain Peel was third son of Robert Peel, the former Prime Minister, and had an estate between the two towns. When the Great Northern Railway, which ran through Sandy opened in 1850 he decided to build a branch line to connect his estate to it. Construction began in 1855.

By that time Captain Peel was serving in the Black Sea during the Crimean War during which he won the newly created Victoria Cross and at the end of which he was given command of a frigate, HMS Shannon, and ordered to China. Captain Peel's mother opened the railway and its locomotive was named, inevitably, Shannon. Peel never used his railway, en route to China he was diverted to India as the Mutiny had broken out and he died of smallpox on 22 Apr 1858. Remarkably, the locomotive survives at the National Railway Museum at York. Even more remarkably, its engine shed still survives in a field at Potton as a vegetable store. The journey time from Potton to Sandy was ten minutes.

The railway did not long survive him, being taken over by the Bedford to Railway in 1862 http://www.bedfordshire.gov.uk/bedscc/sdcountyrec.nsf/web/thepage/Captain+Peel's+Railwa y,+Potton 03/11/2005 Susan Edward

Station Road 1881

A page of the 1881 census for Potton dealing with part of Station Road, the entries read as follows [the number on the left hand side is not the house number, just that number on the census enumerator's list}:

David Noble - Head [of household] - aged 46 - grocer & gardener 6 ac[res] - born Hunts Toseland Martha [Noble] - Wife - aged 52 - born Beds Cockayne Hat[ley] David L [Noble] - Son - aged 17 - Leather Cutter Currier - born Potton Emma S [Noble] - Dau[ghte]r - aged 15 - Dressmaker - born Potton George W [Noble] - Son - aged 12 - Scholar - born Potton

Richard M Musgrave - Head [of household] - aged 49 - Schoolmaster - born Middlesex Marylebone

Agnes [Musgrave] - Wife - aged 42 - Schoolmistress - born Norfolk Norwich Mary A [Musgrave] - Dau[ghte]r - aged 14 - Scholar - born Warwicks[hire] Brinklow Kathleen [Musgrave] - Dau[ghte]r - aged 12 - Scholar - born Warwickshire Brinklow

Samuel Hill - Head [of Household] - aged 33 - Farmer - born Leicester[shire] Husbands Bosworth Anne E [Hill] - Wife - aged 28 - Farmer's Wife - born Gloucestershire Shenington Reginald S [Hill] - Son - aged 3 - Farmer's son - born Leicestershire Husbands Bosworth Edith Walker - Serv[ant] - aged 17 - Gen[era]l Serv[ant] - Oxfordshire Epwell

George Tysoe - Head [of Household] - aged 58 - Ironmonger (Master) - born Beds Bedford Sarah [Tysoe] - Wife - aged 56 - Dressmaker - born Beds Potton Sarah A [Tysoe] - Dau[ghte]r - aged 26 - Dressmaker - born Beds Potton Henry [Tysoe] - Son - aged 23 - Ironmonger - born Beds Potton

Carrie Brown - Head [of Household] - aged 28 - Dressmaker - born Beds Girtford William [Brown] - Brother - aged 24 - Tailor - born Beds Potton Parker [Brown] - Brother - aged 22 - Tailor - born Beds Potton Elizabeth [Brown] - Sister - aged 17 - Dressmaker - born Beds Potton

Red Lion Inn - Samuel Manning - Head [of Household] - aged 51 - Innkeeper, Market gardener emp[loyin]g 2 boys - born Beds Sandy Elizabeth [Manning] - Wife - aged 48 - born Beds Potton Thomas Lester - Stepson - aged 28 - Pensioner - born Beds Potton [the following two entries on the next page - not shown] Mary Saunders - Servant - aged 26 - General Servant - born Cambridgeshire Guilden Morden Samuel Fuller - Boarder - aged 22 - Railway Labourer - born Beds Fenlake

Potton Station in about 1910 [ref.Z50/91/78]

Five years after Captain Peel's Railway opened it was absorbed by the eighth railway to be built in Bedfordshire - the Bedford & Cambridge Railway. Such a railway had been mooted as long ago as 1845 but its was not until 1858 that Charles Liddell of Liddell & Gordon surveyed a viable route. The building of the railway was contracted to Joseph Firbank and it opened on 4 Jul 1862 and was under the aegis of the & North Western Railway Company. It had ten stations in Bedfordshire running from Bedford, St.Mary to Blunham (Willington station opened to passengers in 1903) to Sandy thence along the old Sandy & Potton Railway track to Potton and then on into Cambridgeshire with stations at Gamlingay, the Old North Road, Lord's Bridge and Cambridge. The railway was a victim of Beeching's cuts and closed on 1 Jan 1968.

Potton station was built from yellow gault brick with ornamental dressings in red and blue bricks and had slate roofs. The platform canopy was of five bays of iron and glass on the west side. Decorations included the letters BC. The main passenger building survives, relatively unaltered, as 48 Station Road, a private house.