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History of the Watercress Way by Peter Clarke Local Historian Written for a Talk to the Charity in 2018 Edited and Updated by Kim Adams Trustee

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History of the Watercress Way by Peter Clarke Local Historian Written for a Talk to the Charity in 2018 Edited and Updated by Kim Adams Trustee History of the Watercress Way By Peter Clarke local historian written for a talk to the charity in 2018 Edited and updated by Kim Adams Trustee The Watercress Way is a long distance trail established 2015, which follows or runs close to the track beds of two closed railways – one between Alresford and Kings Worthy which used to be part of the Mid- Hants Railway, and the other between Kings Worthy and Sutton Scotney which used to be part of the Didcot, Newbury and Southampton Railway (“DN&SR”). The sections opened for business on: • Alresford and Kings Worthy on 2nd October 1865 and closed on 5th February 1973. • Kings Worthy and Sutton Scotney opened on 4th May 1885 and finally closed on 3rd February 1964. Fig 1 and 2 1953 OS map and 2020 WW trail By 1885 therefore two separate railways were running - one westwards from Alresford and the other southwards from Sutton Scotney. Both met in Kings Worthy at a point on the main London to Southampton railway line near Woodhams Farm 2 miles north of Winchester, which became known as Winchester Junction Fig 3 and 4 1 Fig 5 Photo of Winchester Junction looking North. Did the two railways connect together? In fact, there was no direct connection at that time between the two railways here as the DN&SR dived under the junction and followed a different route to that of the mainline ending up at its own station in Winchester known as Winchester Cheesehill (later re-named Chesil). Much later on during the Second World War a mile long spur line was constructed from the up main line which joined the DN&SR south of Worthy Down but this had a short life and was closed in 1951. Today both railways are closed, and parts of their routes are no longer accessible as the land has been sold off, or built upon and the cuttings filled in. In some places nature has taken over! Why were the lines built? The Mid-Hants line By the middle of the 19th century, the Industrial Revolution had completely changed the economic face of the country. The economy was no longer based principally on agriculture but on the production and distribution of manufactured goods. The population in the countryside had declined while towns and cities had expanded. The catalyst for this revolution was a plentiful supply of coal which enabled steam to become a reliable source of motive power for the mass manufacture of products. Steam had also become the principal power source for new forms of transport including railways and steamships. Ports, such as Southampton, played a pivotal role in the growth of international trade. All these developments had resulted in Great Britain becoming the dominant industrial power in the world, a fact which was celebrated by the Great Exhibition in 1851. The birth of the L&SWR The attraction of linking Southampton with London by railway at a time when roads were poor and coastal shipping slow and unreliable was the driving force behind the creation of the London & South Western Railway (“L&SWR”). It built the mainline between the two cities via Basingstoke and Winchester between 1838 and 1840. Railway Mania? Fig 6 map Principal railways by 1885 The line was built at a time of frenzied activity when investors were pouring money into railway ventures, a period often referred to as the age of “Railway Mania”. The Railway Mania bubble burst in 1846 as a result of a financial crisis brought about by a disastrously cold and wet summer the previous year when the harvest failed and the potato crop in Ireland was wiped out. Money was hard to come by and many shareholders of railway companies failed to meet payment calls on their shares to meet construction costs. Speculative investment in new railways stopped almost overnight but this made it easier for the larger well managed companies, like the L&SWR, to promote their own schemes to establish feeder branches on realistic financial terms. The company had opened a branch from Woking to Guildford in 1845 and was attracted by the area between Alton and Farnham which was a leading centre of the brewing industry. Farnham hops were highly prized and hop growing and the malting of barley were major businesses in their own right. With Army garrisons at nearby Aldershot as well, the company concluded that the area had good potential as a source of railway traffic. They therefore promoted the construction of a line from Guildford to Farnham which opened in 1849 and which was extended to Alton in 1852. Later on, they also promoted the construction of a line between Pirbright on the mainline and Farnham via Aldershot. This opened in 1870 and enabled trains from Alton and Farnham to have direct access to London, avoiding Guildford. 2 The Jane Austen Connection After the railway had reached Alton a number of local landowners wanted the line to be extended to Winchester to allow connections to be made to Southampton and beyond, but the L&SWR refused probably because of the cost involved in constructing the embankments and cuttings which would be needed. Consequently, in 1860 a group of local landowners, business and professional men, including Lord Ashburton and Sir James Tichborne, got together to promote a 17 mile link from the L&SWR terminus at Alton to the London to Southampton mainline at Kings Worthy via Alresford. The group was chaired by Edward Knight, proprietor of the Chawton estate and nephew of the novelist, Jane Austen. Fig 7 Edward Knight, photo by Brodnax Moore Over to the AA&WR The promoters prepared their own Bill for the 1861 session of Parliament. A company called the Alton, Alresford & Winchester Railway Company Limited (“AA&WR”) was incorporated and, following a board meeting held in the Swan Hotel at Alresford on 27th February 1861, a prospectus was published which estimated the cost of construction at £150,000. The promoters intended to enter into an agreement for working the line with the L&SWR but the L&SWR was unwilling at first to cooperate. However, the L&SWR soon realised that its intransigence might persuade the promoters to join forces with the Petersfield Railway which was then seeking powers to build a line from Petersfield to Southampton via Bishops Waltham which, if realised [it never was], would have destroyed the L&SWR’s lucrative monopoly of railway traffic into Southampton. The L&SWR therefore changed its mind and eventually agreed a 10 year working agreement from 1865 under which it agreed to provide the rolling stock and staff for the new line. The necessary Act of Parliament was passed on 28th June 1861 but the AA&WR experienced some difficulty in getting the necessary financing in place as a result of which construction work was delayed. The line was eventually completed and opened on 2nd October 1865 as a single line of railway, but a condition of the working agreement with the L&SWR required the bridges and earthworks to be capable of taking double tracks. This increased the construction cost to over £200,000. The line was however never double tracked and remained as a single track with passing loops at the stations. Mid-Hants Railway is born By the time the line had opened in 1865 the company had changed its name from the cumbersome “Alton, Alresford & Winchester Railway” to the “Mid-Hants Railway” by which name the surviving section between Alton and Alresford is still known today. Although most today will recognise the Heritage railway name of The Watercress Line . 2. The DN&SR line The origins of The Didcot, Newbury & Southampton Railway (“the DN&SR”) Figure 7 map go back to 1846, before the idea of the Mid-Hants line had been conceived, when a number of speculative proposals for direct links between Southampton and the coalfields of the Midlands and the North were being presented to Parliament; all however failed for one reason or another. Some 25 years later, Southampton found itself at a disadvantage to rival ports as supplies of good quality steam coal for the shipping lines had to be sent via very circuitous routes. Moreover, the business community in Southampton 3 was becoming rapidly disillusioned by the L&SWR’s high charges and what they saw as poor service. To add to this there was also a concern that Southampton was becoming uncompetitive with the opening of shorter cross-Channel routes from Dover. Consequently, in 1873 a group of speculative promoters got together and formed what was to become the DN&SR. They succeeded in getting Parliament to authorise the construction of a line to connect at Didcot with the Great Western Railway (“GWR”) lines to Bristol and the Midlands and near Micheldever with the L&SWR mainline to Southampton, the intention being that the line would be worked by the GWR. Fig 8 map The Act was however poorly drafted in a number of respects and, in particular, it failed to give the GWR the necessary running powers over the L&SWR mainline between Micheldever and Southampton. As a result financial support was not forthcoming, and the scheme was on the point of being abandoned in 1879 when a group of landowners in the Newbury area headed by the Earl of Carnarvon stepped in, took over the DN&SR and saved the project. They obtained a new Act of Parliament in 1880 but this still envisaged a connection into the L&SWR mainline near Micheldever to which the L&SWR strongly objected as it would give the GWR access to what the L&SWR regarded as their territory.
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