Wot? No trains?

We were staying near Kingsbridge, in south Devon. No trains here, and no trace either of the terminus station of the former GWR branch from Brent [on the London to Penzance main line], which closed in 1963 but was not demolished until 2009. The site is now part of an industrial estate.

Moving on to Dartmouth, we found a station, but still no trains. Although Dartmouth was never rail-connected [it was a bridge too far], tickets can still be bought in the station building - now primarily functioning as a restaurant - for travel on the privately-owned Paignton to Kingswear section, at the end of the line and on the other side of the River Dart. 

In the 1930s, Rupert D’Oyly Carte brought his friends, including Malcolm Sargent, for weekends at his country house at Coleton Fishacre. They travelled down on the Friday evening train from Paddington. The house, now owned by the National Trust, is a short drive from Kingswear station.

The cutting-edge, art deco furnishings and fittings inside this Arts and Crafts style building, together with its landscaped gardens rolling down the steep slopes to the sea, must have left an extraordinary impression on his visitors – as it still does today.

It must have set them up well for the working week back in the capital, as their Castle Class-hauled express whisked them back to the Savoy [the hotel and the theatre were both owned by D’Oyly Carte] and the Royal Albert Hall [where Sargent regularly conducted with the Royal Choral Society, throughout the decade].