Precedent Lincoln

Let’s be honest. If you were planning a town centre from scratch you wouldn’t plonk a railway level crossing straight over the High Street. That would especially be the case if you knew that road traffic volumes were going to rise, trains were going to run more frequently, and that one of the two stations would be earmarked for closure, thus funnelling even more trains than before over the road at the same point. In fact, Lincoln’s central area once had 5 level crossings, with two of them only 200 yards apart across High Street. It was certainly a recipe for getting things clogged up.

What was clearly needed was a mathematician, someone who could see the wood for the trees and realise that this just wasn’t going to add up. Luckily, Lincoln had such a man in George Boole FRS [1815-1864], whose recently erected statue outside Lincoln station recognises him as “the grandfather of the digital age”. Unluckily, Boole’s expertise came too late for the city’s railway builders. They’d already set their precedent by opting for level crossings from the off.

Lincoln’s response in recent times, additional to the closure of St Mark’s station and level crossing by British Rail in the 1980s, has been to pedestrianise the High Street and to build a footbridge across the railway so that people are not detained unnecessarily at the level crossing barriers. They have also added lifts to the bridge to ensure equal access for all. It’s difficult to make lift shafts that enhance the overall look of a place. As lift shafts go, these are probably above average in design terms.

Dipping in to online chat about Lincoln suggests that the High Street level crossing is still a topic of conversation, locally, with some even seeing it as a dividing point between “buzzing and cool” Lincoln to the north and “rather falling behind” Lincoln to the south. In the meantime, it remains a significant and characterful part of the city landscape, especially if you like trains and you’re not in a hurry.

George Boole was already an accomplished mathematician during the railway age, but it seems that it was not until 1937 that his work helped lay the foundations for modern computer and communications systems. From his present position, he can just about make out the High Street level crossing at the next corner. He’s probably muttering something like, “Mmm, not sure that’s going to work”. However, we idle passers-by have now got these two notable features of interest to attract our attention in this ever-changing part of the city landscape.

        

Halifax

Nathaniel knew he was a Priestley, but he didn’t know quite how that had happened. An 1890 document stated that “Nathaniel Priestley, brazier or tinker, born near Bradford or Halifax about 1742, died 1828. Wanted his father’s name”. Presumably he knew who his mum was, though that is not recorded anywhere, either. What is known is that he was my Dad’s Great, Great, Great Grandad. The West Yorkshire Archive Service in Halifax holds hand-written Priestley family notebooks from the late seventeenth century onwards, so off we went to Yorkshire to see what we could find out.

The 11.15 Azuma from Doncaster was busy and on time. The elegant thirty-something foursome at the next table were up from London for a two-hour pre-booked lunch date in Harrogate. The upper middle class “Yah” now seems to have become an abbreviated “Yer” [but certainly nowhere near to a commonplace “Yeh”]. After Leeds, our Northern Class 195 DMU to Halifax was heading for the seaside at Blackpool with an altogether different clientele. I wondered if the cost of a weekend at the Lancashire resort for our six cheery fellow travellers was comparable to lunch for four at a fashionable restaurant in Harrogate.  

Central Halifax is full of character. The modern library that contains the WYAS is welded onto the remains of the Square Congregational church, dating from 1857 and still including the spire. This attractive and imaginative scheme was completed in 2017. Behind the ensemble is the Piece Hall, a magnificent Grade I listed masterpiece, constructed for the trading of woollen cloth by the thirty yard “piece”, in the eighteenth century. There are numerous solid Yorkstone buildings still surviving, from public and commercial to old mills with new functions. Since we were last in the centre of town, many of the narrow central streets have been pedestrianised, making it a very leisurely and welcoming place to stroll around.

The grand, old Grade II listed station building at Halifax was opened in 1855. The steel and glass structure that took its place on the adjacent site was completed in 2010, becoming the station’s new entrance and concourse. The original building became part of the tourist attraction, Eureka! The National Childrens’ Museum.  

There were no great revelations for us in the archive. Nathaniel’s dad did a very good job of concealing his son’s true identity - not only from his son but from the whole of his family thereafter. It was suspected, but never proved, that this was because he was a very wealthy man who was not married at the time - or, at least, not to the woman who bore this particular child. As a tinker and brazier whose own son married a 16-year-old gypsy girl, Nathaniel probably couldn’t ever afford a posh lunch in Harrogate, and maybe never made it to the seaside, either. However, the Priestleys can trace their ancestry back to that point 280 years ago and then beyond it over the many centuries that preceded the event. “Yeh”, we go right back - but then, of course, so does everyone else. 

     

Quick March

My train from Peterborough didn’t stop at March. This was a pity as March had intrigued me for years - from right back in the very early 1960s, in fact. The only reason I’d ever heard of March was because a string of Britannia Pacifics were shedded there, at 31B. There they were, listed as such in my locoshed book. But it was surely just the back of beyond? So, why there?

I certainly had no chance of getting to see them from where we were on the other side of the country. The Eastern Region Brits became the subject of train spotting folklore for us on the north west coast – distant, enigmatic and annoyingly out of reach. Why would a whole load of impressive and desirable named locomotives secret themselves away in an otherwise remote Eastern town named after a month of the year, that I didn’t even know existed, previously? I mean it obviously wasn’t exactly a massive hub and it hadn’t cropped up in geography lessons at school as being an industrial centre, holiday resort or even a famous, picturesque market town with a stunning array of old buildings.

I looked at the standard British Railways fold-out map that came at the end of the regional timetable books I bought frequently throughout that time, but they didn’t really offer any clues. Minor routes were spidery red lines, as opposed to the bolder main inter-city routes. I can’t remember for sure, but I bet there weren’t many thick red lines around March. l could see that it was a junction station, but it was just marooned out there on what looked like a boringly flat bit of Britain and some way from places that were more immediately recognisable.

In the long run, I more or less forgot about March. That was because instead of me having to go there to find the illusive Britannias, the Britannias finally came to us, as dieselisation drove them westwards after 1965. Their swan song in the north west of England would eventually leave them looking very forlorn and unloved as they eventually congregated at Carlisle Kingmoor sheds.

I never really did find out much about March. I read later about the formerly extensive Whitemoor marshalling yard, or what remained of it, though it is not visible from the Ely to Peterborough route that I took this week. The closed Wisbech branch that passed the site is still served by track leading from a triangular junction from a point just west of the station. Passing it at speed, March station, looks to be a shadow of its former self, with disused platforms, plenty of rusting sidings round about and lines of stored obsolete bulk carrier wagons. Nothing visible was moving apart from us, though the internet confirms that Network Rail still has an active materials recovery depot on part of the original Whitemoor site.

I don’t even remember seeing photos of Britannias doing their stuff around March, come to think of it. It remains a conundrum to this day. Why were the Brits not simply shedded at Norwich Thorpe or Cambridge? And what did they actually do with those missing Britannias for all that time, anyway?

   

Ely

The approach to Ely by train is very attractive. Waterside premises line the River Great Ouse and its marina, with the magnificent cathedral perched behind on its hill to provide the backdrop. Ely station was built by the Eastern Counties Railway in 1845 and modernised by British Rail in the 1990s. Today it remains a busy junction station, serving all points of the compass - west to Peterborough, north to King’s Lynn, east to Ipswich and south to Cambridge and London. All three platforms are bi-directional. Platform one has the main entrance and most passenger facilities, whereas two and three make up an island platform with a goods loop behind that. Regular EMU and DMU services are interrupted periodically by Class 66-hauled container trains passing through in both directions alongside platform two. Much of the freight traffic between east coast ports and the West Midlands can avoid the station altogether by taking the loop line to the north of the town. The nameplate from Brush Type 4 No. 47572 Ely Cathedral is mounted on a wooden plaque overlooking platform one. Formerly No. D1763, 47572 was cut up in 2000.

    

Leicester Central station

On a summer’s day in the late 1950s, I made my only previous visit to Leicester Central station. We were on holiday with my uncle and aunt in rural Leicestershire when my grandmother was taken ill at her home in Winchester, and Mum decided she should go down to see her mother straight away. We piled into Uncle Bill’s car and arrived at Leicester Central in time to wave Mum off on a train bound for the south coast. I have remembered the green Southern Region carriages from that train ever since. I only wish I’d taken more notice of the locomotive.

Some 65 years later, I wandered up to Leicester Central station’s surviving buildings again yesterday. The porte cochere is preserved, as is the booking hall and the parcels office, all recently renovated and now occupied by a bowling alley, in part, as the redevelopment of the waterside area of the city takes pace. Above the main entrance that I must have used at the time, there is a tastefully added Leicester Central sign, to match the original and preserved parcels office adornment nearby.

The former extensive platform space is now a large car park and partly occupied by business units. You drive up a ramp to reach the former platform level, as access from the main booking hall to trains was gained from below track level by way of an underpass below the up lines and then stairs or lifts up to the substantial island platform, in typical GCR style. Looking at maps on our return, I noticed that we had parked up where the turntable used to be. Flying Scotsman was shedded here for a time in the early 1950s, and so must have been quite familiar with this particular location.

 

Station Road, Edingley

 

It’s a tight right-angle corner, turning left off the main road into Station Road, Edingley. It’s also a blind spot, as my view is blocked by the corner house from traffic arriving at the T-junction from the side road, so I approach with caution. The third property in the short row of terraced houses is called Railway Cottage. This is somewhat optimistic, as is the street name, itself. From here it is probably a good twenty-minutes-walk, or so, to Edingley station house where the railway used to be.  

In fact, Kirklington and Edingley station was neither in Kirklington or Edingley, but roughly half-way between the two, as was the case for many other country stations in Britain. Railways tended to link towns as directly as possible, rather than cater directly for the needs of smaller settlements in between. That often meant a bit of a stretch before local inhabitants could catch the train.

Station Road runs east-north-east, parallel to Edingley Beck and its riverside footpath. It is separated from it by a string of houses and gardens. It’s an attractive part of anyone’s bike ride, passing former farmworker’ cottages, an elegant row of properties that look Edwardian in style but maybe younger, a handful of council houses and bungalows and some splendidly individual and no doubt sought-after more modern residences complete with their traditional pan-tiled rooves, before one or two old farms and then open countryside.

The lane immediately narrows, which can sometimes cause a problem. My progress is halted by two cars stopped facing each other with no obvious space left on either side for me to pass. Their drivers are both seated with windows down and engaged in earnest conversation as I pull up. Surely not road rage here. I’m looking to see if I can squeeze round on either side to make my get-away from the scene before I became embroiled as a witness to a possible assault. I always look on the bright side of things at times like this. There is no obvious way past. The young man with his girlfriend in the smaller car seems to be behaving reasonably and he has clearly not raised his voice. The older man, who is on his own, with his Volvo Estate sprawling across most of the road and who has obviously, from his current position, made no real effort to slow down in advance or move over sufficiently in the first place to enable the two of them to pass each other comfortably, is blatantly trying to put him on the spot. “I drive it every day,” the young man replies, somewhat exasperated, at the same time being as defensive and indignant as he can without being unnecessarily provocative. After we have all been seated for a further couple of minutes, including me on my saddle, the girlfriend notices me waiting and the young man suddenly reverses a few yards rather jerkily allowing me to escape. I leave them to it. There is no sign of them when I return that way some twenty minutes later. I look down for any noticeable patches of blood on the road but there is no evidence as to how it had been resolved or who had eventually given way.

Then its on past the largest building on Station Road. The care home was a building site for months as it completely morphed into a much larger version of its former self. A sizable notice outside the gates during the Covid years told passers-by that they might like to enquire about the availability of short-term stays. I suppose that black humour in the darkest of times takes some bottle, really.

I’m in the countryside proper now, passing Conker Lane, as the track to the farm and camp site is known, for obvious reasons. When conkers were currency and at a premium in the built-up area that I lived in as a child, one could only have dreamt of the treasures lying over-looked and abandoned in Conker Lane at that special time every year. 

On the right is the only real eyesore in Station Road. This is obviously a current trend - piles of aggregate. Farmers used to just grow crops and keep animals. This is the second such relatively recent blight to spoil [literally] one of my frequent circuits. It started at the top of the field with a heavily padlocked gate on the back lane, beyond which piles of multi-coloured stones suddenly sprouted - broken bricks and rubble, dark topsoil, grey building material, sands and gravel. Pretty much anything, really, though once the grass verge there had become so churned up by visiting lorries that it had become a quagmire in wet weather, and the edges of the road surface had started to disintegrate from the weight of HGVs turning out in a confined space, the heaps of stone began to shrink, only to appear again at the bottom of the hill right next to Station Road. Now, in addition to the dumps themselves, there is a mobile home, odd lorries, a freight container, some JVCs and a skip, plus a brand new open-sided steel barn plonked right on the skyline. It’s a complete mess. It beggars’ belief to me that it is allowed to happen in an otherwise unspoiled rural landscape with no previous industrial activity. Can somebody explain to me how that is allowed to happen, please?

At the cross-roads there are road signs warning users about icy surfaces, as the junction is in a dip and hidden from the sun for much of the day by a row of tall trees. They’ve even added slightly raised, corrugated tarmac ridges to the road surface to aid adhesion and channel some water away.

Though it doesn’t say so, Station Road presumably takes a left here as that’s the way to the station. The fields here are periodically occupied by alpacas, sheep, horses and donkeys, with crops, including wheat and bright yellow rape, in the fields that meet at the corner. This is also a good spot for owls, both barn and little. The smaller version took up residence in some wooden sheds alongside a field boundary for a few years and then spent a lot of time surveying the surrounding ground from the tops of the telegraph poles that line the road.

The admirably re-surfaced and winding road to the station now passes a single old farmhouse in the approach to the bridge over the railway’s track bed. When I first started cycling past here it was occupied by an elderly couple who kept a small-holding. The front door was always wide open and the ducks, geese and hens that wandered the road outside had open access to the house as well. You could see them through the windows, prancing around on the dining room table and the rest of the furniture. The somewhat dishevelled two-some were the perfect match for their dilapidated farmhouse and their menagerie. By then, I think they had become an engrained part of the local folklore. Sadly, it was eventually reported that they had died within a short time of each other and that a younger couple had taken over the place. I fancy that they must have got very fed up with being stared at by every passing driver, cyclist and rambler, as everyone had habitually done until they had realised that there were new occupants.

I’ve reached the station at last, except that I’m very nearly 100 years too late to catch the last passenger train. Coal trains continued to roll down the slope towards the Trent through the decades that followed, and no doubt the odd pick-up goods would have still called by to interrupt the peace and quiet, collecting farm produce and dropping off timber and other supplies.

The shallow and under-stated valley of the Edingley Beck remains a picturesque and tranquil location, though, sadly, although lapwings and skylarks do their best to announce the arrival of spring, turtle doves and cuckoos no longer seem to be in the mix.  

Hoylake railway station

First opened in 1866, the Art Deco station building was designed by William Henry Hamlyn and dates from 1938, when the line from West Kirby to Liverpool was electrified. It is now a Grade II listed building. The circular clerestory adding natural light to the booking hall below is a distinguishing feature.

Photo of Hoylake station with thanks to Chris Priestley.