The Social Anatomy of a Beeching Railway Closure A Case Study of Goathland and the Whitby Area 1963-65 Nigel Sheppard MA by Research University of York History April 2020 Abstract This dissertation is a micro-history of the impact of a Beeching Report railway closure. It documents the powerful but unsuccessful campaign of the villagers of Goathland against the closure of their local railway. This campaign was strongly led and orchestrated by the local newspaper, the Whitby Gazette and community leaders. This orchestration emphasised the hardship that people would experience and was a catalyst for people’s negative perception of the closure and the alternative bus services. These perceptions of an adverse social impact proved not to reflect reality. The perceptions and the impact of a Beeching closure have not been widely studied by historians. However, for Goathland a wealth of archival material from the Whitby Gazette and the letters of protest written by the villagers have survived to form the basis of this study. New tools using the power of HGIS databases and analysis are applied to this material to portray a people-centric view of a closure. These tools are used to model how, in 1963, the railway had an emotional rather than practical value for the local community. From this starting point it shows that local perception of the impact of the railway closure was always going to be at variance with the reality. To the villagers the perception was important, not the reality. Bespoke accessibility models bring an objectivity to the role of public transport in villagers’ lives. These villagers were isolated after closure, but objectively they were isolated before, they just did not perceive that they were. 2 Contents Abstract ....................................................................................................................... 2 Contents ...................................................................................................................... 3 Tables ......................................................................................................................... 5 Figures ........................................................................................................................ 5 Maps ........................................................................................................................... 6 Images ........................................................................................................................ 6 Acknowledgements ..................................................................................................... 7 Declaration .................................................................................................................. 8 1 “Children would be exposed to the very certain risk of death” - Approaches to the study of local railway closures ..................................................................................... 9 Structure ................................................................................................................ 10 Methodology and Sources ..................................................................................... 11 “History remembers the Black Death, not the other plagues” - The Impact of the Beeching Report in Perspective ............................................................................ 13 “That hardship would result from the closure is obvious” - The Closure Process and Hardship ......................................................................................................... 24 2 “A fine display of local campaigning doomed to failure” - The Whitby Gazette. .... 26 “A fair representation of the life of Whitby and District” - The Whitby Gazette and Railway Closure ..................................................................................................... 32 “Rail Closure a Bitter Blow” - The Importance of Headlines .................................. 33 “The paper has its finger on the pulse of country people” - Letters to the paper reflect its readership .............................................................................................. 34 “It is up to you” - How editorials led the public campaign against railway closure . 37 Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 45 3 “The loss of the railway would mean the death of many of us” - The Goathland Letters ....................................................................................................................... 47 A methodology to analyse the Goathland Protest letters ...................................... 49 Qualitative Analysis and the HGIS database ......................................................... 53 “A useful living community…a mixed lot of people who thought they made a sensible contribution to the life of the country” - Goathland .................................. 56 “The individual as the subject rather than the object of history” - The protest letters as micro-history ..................................................................................................... 64 “I do not believe that most of the fears you expressed on behalf of your constituents will be realised in practice” - The reality of railway use in Goathland 68 “They do travel by train” - Where did people travel by railway? ............................ 70 “I wish to protest….on the grounds of hardship” - The concerns of the inhabitants of Goathland .......................................................................................................... 72 Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 88 3 4 “The railway was not often used because they did not provide services at the time people wanted them” – Accessibility and Change .................................................... 90 Methodology .......................................................................................................... 92 “An area rich in speculation with little real evidence” - Population ........................ 93 “The capacity people have for getting around” - Mobility ....................................... 95 “The ease with which people can reach necessary services” - Accessibility ....... 106 Conclusion ........................................................................................................... 117 5 “Alternative Services Largely Fulfilling Need” ...................................................... 119 Appendices ............................................................................................................. 122 Abbreviations .......................................................................................................... 131 Bibliography ............................................................................................................ 132 Primary Sources .................................................................................................. 132 Secondary Sources ............................................................................................. 138 4 Tables Table 1. Whitby Gazette Railway Articles Jan 4, 1963 to Jul 23, 1965 ..................... 28 Table 2. Database fields for Goathland Protest Letters ............................................ 52 Table 3. Letters of Objection to Malton to Whitby Railway Closure .......................... 65 Table 4. Goathland Railway Journeys per week – Spring 1964 ............................... 67 Table 5. Status of Goathland Letter Writers .............................................................. 67 Table 6. Use of common phrases on the letters of objection .................................... 73 Table 7. Place of work of Goathland villagers ........................................................... 86 Table 8. Village Population 1961 and 1971 .............................................................. 93 Table 9. Goathland Distance to Public Transport Access ......................................... 97 Table 10. Village Public Transport Frequency 1963 and 1967 compared .............. 101 Table 11. Village Public Transport Time to Destinations 1963 and 1967 compared ................................................................................................................................ 103 Table 12. Comparative Bus and Railway Fares (new pence) from Goathland 1963 ................................................................................................................................ 104 Table 13. Buckman Accessibility Index applied to Goathland before and after Railway Closure ...................................................................................................... 107 Table 14. Work Accessibility ................................................................................... 110 Table 15. Shopping Accessibility ............................................................................ 112 Table 16. Last evening departure to villages from the nearest town ....................... 112 Table 17. Sunday Accessibility ............................................................................... 113 Table 18. Composite accessibility excluding frequency .......................................... 114 Table 19. Composite accessibility including frequency ........................................... 114 Table 20. Analysis of Whitby Gazette 1962 to 1965 - Railway Content .................. 123 Table