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RAILWAYS IN GLOUCESTER AND CHURCHDOWN
THE YEARS UP TO 1845
Set at the lowest natural crossing of the River Severn, Gloucester has always been a focus for traders and travellers. Since the time of the Romans, pack mules, carts and animals for market have all met at Gloucester Cross – also known as "The Crossroads of England" – while from the opening of the ship canal to Sharpness in April 1827, produce brought by ocean going vessels has been transferred to northbound barges in Gloucester Docks.
However, before the completion of the Gloucester and Berkeley Canal, Gloucester Docks was also served by an early form of railway known as a tramroad. This was necessary, because the poor state of the roads in the opening years of the Nineteenth Century was holding up trade between Gloucester and Cheltenham. Indeed, the turnpike road of 1756 that was the ancestor of today’s B4063 was in such a bad condition by 1809 that the Postmaster General withdrew the Gloucester to Cheltenham mail coach.
Coal from the Forest of Dean could only be taken by water as far as either the port of Gloucester or the end of the Coombe Hill Canal, which had been opened in 1796. The same was true of Staffordshire coal, which was also unloaded near The Coalhouse Inn near Apperley. Carboniferous limestone from Bristol, used for roadbuilding in the newly fashionable spa, also faced the same obstacle and in each case the goods had to be expensively carted several miles to where they were needed.
Travelling in the other direction though was building stone from the Cotswolds, and in particular from the quarries on Leckhampton Hill near Devils Chimney owned by Mr Charles Brandon Trye, who was also senior surgeon at Gloucester Infirmary. It was Mr Trye who first promoted interest in in a Gloucester and Cheltenham Tramroad in 1806.
Like many other primitive tram roads – or plateways as they are sometimes called – the Gloucester and Cheltenham Tramroad offered a smoother alternative to contemporary highways for horse-drawn waggons. It also guided plain wheeled carts by means of upright flanges on the inside edges of its metal running plates, which themselves rested on stone blocks. In the case of the Gloucester and Cheltenham Tramroad, these flanges were to be set 3’ 6" apart.
As it happened, Mr Trye didn’t have to try too hard. His project was authorised by act of Parliament in 1809, and the first stone block was laid by the Earl of Suffolk and Berkshire on 21 November that year. Construction of the nine mile long tramroad was completed in less than 24 months and the first horse drawn wagon train ran along it on 4 June 1811.
As you might imagine, Gloucestershire has changed a lot since those days but some physical evidence of the tram road remains. The B4063 has unexpectedly wide verges, and historians believe that some of the tramroad horses were stabled at the former Plough Inn ( Now White Lion House of AGD Ltd) at Staverton – one of sixteen hostelries en route.
The iron plates passed behind the pub before crossing Hatherley Brook just East of where Blenheim House now stands on the trackbed. The tramroad bridge next to today’s kennels and cattery has long since disappeared, but a perfect image of it remains supporting the B 4063 itself.
We know this because in January 1818 an advertisement appeared for contractors to build a new road bridge with three arches "to correspond and adjoin with those under the Rail Road."
Deeper still into the Parish of Churchdown, the tramroad passed behind the Hare & Hounds on the corner of Parton Road toward Two Mile Cottage, which was built facing the iron way rather than the road. Today this dwelling is T shaped, but before the addition of an extension in the 1980s the original portion was a simple two storey cottage with the roofline parallel to the plates.
From Two Mile Cottage, the tramroad route would have approached central Gloucester from behind the one time AA office cum kebab van site and over what is now Elmbridge roundabout. Horses would then have hauled their wagons near to the King Edward pub at Longlevens and along Elmbridge Road before the tramroad offers us a more visible clue in the shape of this little spur of Millbrook Street just south of the modern Horton Road level crossing.
This site in Park Road meanwhile was once the Spa Wharf of the tramroad: comprising offices and stores in the buildings with a small marshalling yard and weighbridge in the forecourt. Back on the main line, so to speak, the route of the iron plates is today blocked by buildings at this point but the line re-emerges in…
Old Tram Road before running into Albion Street by the Whitesmiths Arms, over Southgate Street and entering Gloucester Docks through a gateway near what is now the Tall Ships pub.
As you can see, the gateway itself is now blocked up but a plaque has been fixed to the wall to commemorate its existence.
Indeed, until the mid 1980s there was a set of stone sleeper blocks visible on the north side of the barge arm of the Docks marking one of the tramroad sidings. Sadly this has now disappeared under tarmac but I understand there are long term plans to dig it up again for display, just as there were once plans announced to reopen this tramroad entrance and place a replica chauldron wagon in it as a gate guardian for the Docks.
Either way, as a result of the opening of the tramroad, the price of coal and roadstone dropped considerably in Cheltenham while westbound traffic included limestone pipes from Fox Hill near Guiting. From Gloucester Docks these pipes went by barge to Manchester.
Like a privatized railway, all the waggons on the tramroad were privately owned and operated, and toll houses – with the same function as those on contemporary roads – and weighbridges were set up to regulate traffic. Each wagon displayed its unladen weight, owner’s name and registration number for the benefit of company clerks. A typical train consisted of two wagons ( carrying a four ton load ) hauled by a single horse and inclusive of loading, unloading and stops in the many passing loops along the single line a round trip from Gloucester to Cheltenham would have taken all day.
The establishment in 1819 of Cheltenham Gasworks – which burned Forest of Dean coal – was a boost for the fortune of the tramroad but when true railways of the type we know today arrived in 1840 it was difficult for plain wheeled carts drawn by horses to compete.
The combination of stem locomotives, flanged wheels running on plain rails and the possibility of longer routes without unloading pushed the Gloucester and Cheltenham Tramroad - by this time part of the Midland Railway - into the red during the 1850s. An Abandonment Act was passed by Parliament in 1859 and on April 16 1861 the tram plates themselves were auctioned off for scrap.
Ironically, though, the Gloucester & Cheltenham Tramroad had experimented with a steam locomotive in 1831 – just a year after the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway and the introduction of the first steam tug on the River Severn. Patriotically named "Royal William", this six wheeled machine was built at Neath Abbey Ironworks in Wales. However, it was so heavy that it kept breaking the iron plates and its boiler expired before it could run beyond the City boundaries. If you would like to know more about the Gloucester & Cheltenham Tramroad, an excellent and highly readable book of the same name has been written by David Bick and is published by the Oakwood Press.
Just as the geography of the Severn and its hinterland made Gloucester Britain’s most inland port however, so the rivalry of railway companies racing to link the industrial Midlands with the Sea was to make the Cathedral City a battleground of the iron road. With passengers and goods for many years the losers, the countdown to conflict began in 1836.
By using flanged wheeled vehicles running on plain rails supported by wooden sleepers a modern edge railway allowed fast, powerful and relatively heavy steam locomotives to be introduced, outperforming horses at a stroke. Although a possible route for an edge railway between Gloucester and Bristol was surveyed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel in 1833, the first railway to reach Gloucester arrived from Birmingham.
This was the aptly named Birmingham and Gloucester Railway, which was authorised by Act of Parliament in 1836. In the same session, Parliament also approved plans by the Cheltenham & Great Western Union Railway to link Cheltenham, Gloucester and Stroud with the Great Western Railway at Swindon, the Great Western itself having been authorised by Act of Parliament on 31 August 1835. Incidentally, 1836 also saw the first meeting of the modern Gloucester City Council at a time when the population of the City was about 10 000. Churchdown, meanwhile, had just been subject to an Act of Parliament to enclose its fields.
The Birmingham & Gloucester Railway was to be built to a gauge of 4’ 8 ½". This had been the spacing of the wheels on Roman chariots and was also popular in the North East, where George and Robert Stephenson had pioneered modern railways with their Stockton and Darlington line of 1825. In fact the Stephensons, father and son, had also built the Liverpool and Manchester, London and Birmingham and Grand Junction Railway – linking Liverpool to Birmingham – all to the same gauge of 4’ 8 ½". Indeed, Birmingham was linked with Liverpool and London by rail as early as 1838.
Like the Great Western Railway though, the Cheltenham & Great Western Union Railway was built to the Broad Gauge of 7’ 0 1/4" between the rails. Unlike the Stephensons, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, engineer of the Great Western Railway, was not content with a spacing of 4’ 8 1/2": which he contemptuously referred to as the "Coal Cart Gauge"
Starting from the premise of science rather than tradition, he reasoned that as a railway locomotive could haul greater loads more rapidly than a tramroad horse the gauge of railways should be expanded to increase both load capacity and stability to match this performance: – which would itself grow yet further as larger boilers and fireboxes became feasable.
Brunel also noticed that many rich people preferred riding in their own carriages on flat trucks on the railways rather than in the purpose built passenger stock provided – in just the same way that 92234 here is hauling a train of milk tank trailers near Gerrards Cross. As the average width of the carriages was 7’ he concluded that the optimum gauge for a railway would be 7’ 0 ¼" .
Although the Broad Gauge used more land for its track and so cost more to build, Brunel remained firm in his beliefs. The Great Western Railways Act of Incorporation did not specify a gauge for the new London to Bristol route and after some debate the board of the GWR accepted Brunel’s Broad Gauge in October 1835.
As the new railway opened piecemeal in the late 1830s Brunels comfortable, safe, fast, wide-bodied trains became very popular with the travelling public. A clergyman living at Banbury expressed the feelings of many when he wrote:
"I do not want the little hair on my head rubbed off by riding in the London and Birmingham Companys low carriages. I would vastly prefer travelling the whole distance in one of those splendid carriages of the G.W. Co. than being transferred to one of those little pig-boxes of the London and Birmingham line."
Meanwhile, on 1 July 1839, the Bristol & Gloucester Railway Company was authorised by Act of Parliament to build a 4’ 8 ½" gauge line from Bristol to Standish, where it was due to meet the Cheltenham & Great Western Union Railway. So that trains could run directly to Gloucester, it was the intention of the Bristol & Gloucester Company to negotiate with the Cheltenham & Great Western Union Railway to lay a third rail over its Broad Gauge tracks. Creating such a mixed gauge route would have been an expensive project for the Bristol & Gloucester Railway but it at least avoided the need for changing trains. Little did the company know what was about to happen.
The Birmingham & Gloucester became the first edge railway to reach Gloucester on 4 November 1840 when its terminus opened where Metz Way now runs past Asda. The line – which for many months only stretched to Bromsgrove in the North – crossed the Gloucester & Cheltenham Tramroad at Horton Road and then followed the alignment of today’s railway North East through Churchdown.
Indeed the arrival of the Birmingham and Gloucester Railway caused the biggest earth moving enterprise in Churchdown since the Iron Age Chosen people had fortified the hill. The village marked the first cutting and over line bridges on the route from Gloucester to Cheltenham and the spoil taken from the area between Pirton Lane and Parton Road – and slightly beyond in either direction – went into the embankments at the extremities of the Parish.
Here, LMS built "Jubilee" Class 4-6-0 45653 "Barham" is en route to Cheltenham with a Gloucester to Birmingham stopping train on 28 April 1964 and just obscuring the lead bogie of the fourth carriage is the parapet of one of Churchdown’s four under line bridges. This particular structure – adjoining the playing fields of Chosen Hill School but now blocked by hedges – was known to have been built specifically for the Cheltenham & Great Western Union Railway in February and March 1839. Similar bridges carry the line over Brookfield Road and a farm track to the East - just on the Gloucester side of today’s M5 motorway – while two culverts carry the line over Hatherley Brook and one of its tributaries.
Witcombe Bridge – on the Westernmost limits of Churchdown – also offers agricultural access. More importantly, Churchdown was now split into two distinct sections by transport infrastructure: a subdivision that would not appear again until the A40 Golden Valley Bypass was finished in 1969.
Then, on 30 June 1841 the Great Western main line was completed between Paddington and Temple Meads - via Box Tunnel- while in August the Birmingham & Gloucester opened its route all the way up to Curzon Street station in Birmingham where it joined the London & Birmingham and Grand Junction Railways.
23 August 1841 meanwhile saw a 250 yard long siding of the Gloucester & Cheltenham Tramroad open, linking its main line and the new Birmingham & Gloucester Railways station. This allowed coal landed at Gloucester Docks to be shovelled directly from horse drawn waggons into railway trucks.
By 1842, Gloucester had good railway links with many important Northern centres but its route to London was a circuitous one by way of Birmingham and Euston. This situation was to improve dramatically within three years but at a disastrous cost to other services.
With its London to Bristol main line complete the Great Western Railway was able to concentrate on the territory to its North. In 1843 it leased and later purchased the financially troubled Cheltenham & Great Western Union Railway and at the same time also leased the Bristol & Exeter Railway - which had reached Taunton in 1842. This meant that Broad Gauge trains could, on completion of the lines, run direct between Cheltenham and Devon, their high speed and great carrying capacity making them a viable alternative to a more direct route from Gloucester to Bristol.
However, this put the directors of the Bristol & Gloucester Railway in an awkward position as by 1843 the Great Western was unlikely to allow the installation of a third rail between Standish and Gloucester. Thus, having been checkmated by their rivals, the Bristol & Gloucester board decided to join them and adopt a space of 7’0 1/4" between the rails – a decision just about possible given the bridges and tunnels already built on the route. A payment of £ 50 000 toward the Great Westerns new ventures in Devon and Cornwall also gave the Bristol & Gloucester use of Bristol Temple Meads station, although costs were subsequently saved by sharing one gauge between Standish and Gloucester.
The line from Bristol to Standish was completed on 13 June 1844 and the first Broad Gauge train was able to leave Gloucester for Bristol on 8 July that year. It would have steamed out from one of the two platforms of a new station built to the North of the Birmingham & Gloucester terminus and curved south across the existing Tramway Crossing at Horton Road. Unfortunately though, the first Broad Gauge train from Bristol through Standish to Gloucester – the two and a half hour delayed 10.00 am service – never reached Gloucester station : the second of its two locomotives derailing just south of Tramway Crossing. What the passengers from its twelve carriages finally walked towards however was a Break of Gauge.
Brunel had argued that a Break of Gauge at Gloucester would be less inconvenient to travellers and goods than transferring trains at Temple Meads: and planned to use modern container style "swap bodies", vehicles with wheels sliding on their axles or even flat Broad Gauge wagons carrying narrow gauge stock piggyback style to overcome unloading troubles.
However, on both counts he was wrong. Not only were the inter-modal wagons never built but Gloucester was entirely the wrong place to change trains. Geographically half way between the port of Bristol and the factories of the West Midlands it acted as a stumbling block for traffic between them. A single gauge line between the two centres would have offered the most logical route for imports and exports but the technical dogma of the time was to prevent this.
Proponents of both 7’ ¼" and 4’ 8 1/2" gauges were afraid of competition from each other if a rival system were to penetrate their territories. Brunel of the Tory-backed Great Western on one side and the Whig-supported Stephensons on the other also stood to lose professional reputation and credibility if they were defeated. Thus the Battle of the Gauges commenced on both a practical and ideological level.