Bodiam Station - Content Page

BODIAM station - History

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This page provides  details of the core history behind the Kent and East Sussex Railway (KESR) and provides specific details bout Bodiam Station.

2678 Terrier Class Loco
2678 Terrier Class Loco coming into Bodiam Station

This picture shows some very useful line side details. It also shows 2678, an A1X “Terrier” Class 0-6-0 tank engine built in 1880 by the London, Brighton & South Coast Railway and then known as No. 78 “Knowle”.

As No78 the locomotive entered service on 23 July 1880. Between that date and the formation of the Southern Railway in 1923, "Knowle" ran an incredible total for a small engine of nearly a million miles.

For a short period in the early 1930s, it saw service on the lighter lines of the Isle of Wight, for which it was fitted with an extended bunker, becoming No.14 Bembridge.

Reference:  Terrier Trust

 

This is a series of photographs found on the internet.

Lorry loading hop pickers
From the Robertsbridge end of the platform back toward Tenterden.
Taken around 1961 possibly just before closure.
From Robertsbridge toward Tenterden.  This picture is dated 1954.

 

Lorry loading hop pickers Huxford's coal lorry cleaned up and ready for the Hop Pickers.  The lorry and Hop Pickers are behind Bodiam Station.

At the Guinness Hop Gardens in Bodiam three-quarters of a million hop plants were attended to by 100 men in 1953, but still required 4,000 hand-pickers and 3 machines to harvest.

Many will still remember the hop-picking holidays, which were a curious collision of country and urban life, a ritual for many London families in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which saw families and young children work together to bring the harvest home.

Reference:  British Newspaper Archive

 

Bodiam Station NRM
Track Plan of Bodiam Station

I found the original track plan for Bodiam Staion on the National Railway Musem Archive. It took some searching but eventually I fund a list of station plans and one entry for Bodiam Station. I contacted The National Railway Museum and they arranged a scan of the plan and emailed me an electronic copy.

Reference:  Oxford Publishing Company Trackplans Microfilm List

 

KESR Route Map
Map of the KESR

The main elements of the history of the Kent and East Sussex Railway (KESR):

  • Light Railways Act 1896: Line authorised to be built with 56 pound per yard rails, but was built with 60 pounds per yard
  • Opened for freight from 26 March 1900; Passengers 2 April 1900
  • Not part of 1923 Grouping
  • January 1948 line became part of BR Southern Region
  • Nationalisation: LSWR carriages; mixed trains with a brake van
  • Line closed to passengers 1954
  • Line closed to freight June 1961
  • Preservation started immediately after closure
  • Heritage Line opened to Bodiam 2000

Reference:  KESR Wikiperdia