Trans. Bristol & Gloucestershire Archaeological Society 134 (2016), 231–250 The Avonmouth Light Railway By RICHARD COATES The Avonmouth Light Railway (ALR) Company was a nominally independent railway company operating a short standard-gauge branch line from a point on the Great Western and Midland Railways Joint Committee line near Avonmouth Docks station in Bristol to a Bristol Corporation electricity installation east of the new main entrance to Avonmouth docks in King Road Avenue, and perhaps beyond (Fig. 1). This paper contains the first extensive account of its history, an exploration of a problematic detail in that history, and a reflection on the methodological interest that recollection of its history presents for historians. Ownership of the project as conceived The King’s Weston estate of Dr Philip Napier Miles (1865–1935) had owned much of the land in Shirehampton and what is now Avonmouth since Dr Miles’s grandfather, Philip John Miles (1773–1845), a wealthy Bristol banker and briefly MP for Bristol, purchased it from the estate of Lord de Clifford on the latter’s death without issue in 1832. Philip John’s son Philip William Skynner Miles (1818–81), also MP for Bristol, had been responsible for promoting Avonmouth Docks, opened in 1877 on a large tract of the estate’s marshland, and Philip the grandson was keen to exploit the area’s commercial potential still further, extending the docks complex with the Royal Edward Dock, opened in 1908.1 The ALR was a further project of the King’s Weston estate intended as part of the infrastructure of a prospective new industrial and commercial zone to be developed east of St Andrew’s Road, which marks the effective eastern boundary of the dockland area (Fig. 2). One commentator has regarded this road, which the Docks Committee were obliged to build as a condition of the purchase of land for new docks from King’s Weston, as a ‘disastrous’ restriction on the potential of the docks to expand, and as a road built to favour the interests of the King’s Weston estate now that the docks themselves had been sold off to Bristol Corporation; though what King’s Weston could have gained from restricting the docks is far from obvious, and the port’s official historian may be somewhat partisan in this matter.2 The ALR was projected almost entirely on land owned and largely occupied by Dr Miles (all bar where some public roads and paths were crossed),3 and was intended to shadow St Andrew’s Road closely. Its headquarters were in the King’s Weston estate office in High Street, Shirehampton. In the 1903 order allowing 1. On the involvement of the King’s Weston estate in the development of Avonmouth, see the King’s Weston Action Group website, www.kwag.org.uk/history/the-victorian-era/. 2. W.G. Neale, At the Port of Bristol: the turn of the tide 1900–1914 (Bristol, 1970), 92. For other implicitly critical remarks on the restrictions placed on the port by King’s Weston, see W.G. Neale, The Tides of War and the Port of Bristol, 1914–1918 (Bristol, 1976), 15 and esp. 152. 3. Gloucestershire Archives [GA], Q/RUm/567, book of reference of ALR. 232 THE AVONMOUTH LIGHT RAILWAY Fig. 1. The ALR (shown as a dark line), produced by the Railway Clearing House (1914). The junction labelled ‘Holesmouth Jn.’ is in fact Hallen Marsh Junction. Holesmouth is the ‘junc. with dock lines’; cf. Fig. 5. RICHARD COATES 233 Fig. 2. Grayscale copy of plan of the proposed development of the King’s Weston estate at Avonmouth, 1905. The entire proposed course of the ALR can be seen departing from south of the ‘Industrial Dwellings Area’, looping in an inverted S to the west of the ‘Cricket Ground’, and proceeding along the eastern margin of St Andrew’s Road, enticing development in the ‘Factory Sites’ area, as far as a double junction (north and south) with the GWR to the west of the word ‘Owner’. Reproduced by courtesy of King’s Weston Action Group. 234 THE AVONMOUTH LIGHT RAILWAY the construction of the line, Dr Miles is named as proprietor of the line, responsible for appointing two other directors.4 The railway context Philip William Skynner Miles had been a promoter of a railway from Hotwells, below the Clifton suspension bridge, to a pier, hotel and intended pleasure resort in the marshland, which was at first called ‘River’s Mouth’ and then Avonmouth. This, the Bristol Port Railway and Pier Company enterprise (BPR),5 was opened on 6 March 1865, and was a freestanding line, i.e. it did not connect with any other line of the burgeoning national rail infrastructure. When the docks at Avonmouth were planned, the need for such a connection became pressing. The BPR tried to promote a connection, but failed to attract sufficient investment. In 1871 the interest of the Great Western Railway (GWR) and the Midland Railway was engaged, and they formed a Joint Committee to take over and build the BPR’s planned line from Sneyd Park Junction on the isolated line to two junctions: (1) Narroways Hill Junction on the GWR line from Bristol Temple Meads to New Passage (as it was at the time, before the Severn Tunnel was opened in 1886), and (2) Kingswood Junction on the Midland Railway line from Mangotsfield and beyond to the Midland’s Bristol terminus at St Philip’s and to Temple Meads. This new line, opened for goods in 1877 to coincide with the opening of the new dock on 24 February, and for passengers on 1 September 1885, was known as the Clifton Extension Railway. The junctions referred to allowed through running to Avonmouth from all parts of the by then extensive GWR and Midland systems. The GWR and Midland Joint Committee formally took over the BPR entirely in 1890.6 The GWR had built two further lines of its own to Avonmouth: a minor local one opened on 2 February 1900 from Pilning Junction on the Bristol–Cardiff line through the Severn Tunnel, and one opened on 9 May 1910 from Filton Junction, allowing direct access by mainline traffic from the ‘Badminton’ line (Swindon to Cardiff via Stoke Gifford). The detailed railway history of Avonmouth is complex,7 but the raft of minor changes of alignment, new docks and dockland lines, and repositioning of stations does not need to be embarked on here. The three lines mentioned provide the essential context for the ALR. Light railways The ALR was promoted under the provisions of the Light Railways Act 1896, which permitted railways to be built after obtaining an Order from the Light Railway Commissioners answering to the Board of Trade, without the expense and lengthy procedures of a private Act of Parliament, which would be the normal requirement. Such lines could be built to less exacting constructional 4. The National Archives [TNA], MT 58/208; GA, Q/RUm/583; Bristol University Library [BUL], DM1228/1/2. 5. On the BPR, see especially C.G. Maggs, The Bristol Port Railway and Pier and the Clifton Extension Railway (Oakwood Libr. of Railway Hist. 37, 1975); E. Thomas, Down the ’Mouth: a history of Avonmouth (1981), 45–54. 6. Strictly speaking, the BPR, with all its staff, was transferred jointly on 1 September 1890 to the GWR and Midland, under the Great Western and Midland Railway Companies (Clifton and Bristol) Act of 25 May 1871 and the Midland Railway (Additional Powers) Act of 25 July 1890. When built, the line was actually administered by the Clifton Extension Railway Joint Committee until 31 October 1894, and from then onwards by the Great Western and Midland Railways Joint Committee: Maggs, Bristol Port Railway, 11, 19. 7. M. Vincent, Lines to Avonmouth: a story of railways in the Bristol area (Oxford, 1979). RICHARD COATES 235 standards than conventional railways, which entailed in particular the setting of limits to the maximum axle weight of locomotives. Many short railways of this kind were proposed for the carrying of goods in rural areas, and the genesis of the ALR, though by no means a typical rural line, fell into this category. Orders obtained The ALR scheme was incorporated on 12 December 1893 as a ‘light railway’ before such a concept actually existed in law,8 but the plan of reincorporation was not deposited until November 1902.9 An order for its construction was eventually obtained in 190310 under the Light Railways Act of 1896; but with the full original plan threatening not to be implemented before the period specified in the Act expired, extensions were sought and acquired in 1908, 1909 and 1910, with four-year renewal finally obtained in 1912 through the Avonmouth Light Railway (Revival and Extension of Time) Order,11 again under the Light Railways Act 1896. Nevertheless, the line was not then completed to the full original specification (as in Figure 2), despite periodic renewals of powers until their final expiry on 26 May 1927.12 In effect, it remained a siding dignified with the name of a railway. However, certain provisional assertions made below on the basis of the bulk of the evidence about the eventual extent of the ALR will be re-examined towards the end of the article. Planned relation to other railways The book of reference of the ALR,13 and the contractors’ plan of November 1902,14 specifies that it was to run from Shirehampton parish (of which Avonmouth was a part at the time) to Henbury parish, a distance of 2 miles 1 furlong and 1½ chains (3,447 m).