Our History
From 1865 to the present day!
The Mid-Hants line was promoted by local interests as the Alton, Alresford & Winchester Railway and received its Act of Parliament in 1861. The first chairman was Edward Knight of Chawton, nephew of Jane Austen. The new line was intended to connect the existing lines at Alton and Winchester and provide an alternative route between London and Southampton. A further Act of 1864 renamed the company the Mid-Hants Railway and the line opened in October 1865.
The new railway ran for 17 miles through an agricultural area. The only town of any size on the route was Alresford but stations were also provided at Ropley, Itchen Abbas and (from August 1868) Medstead. Between Alton and Ropley the line crosses the watershed between the Thames and Itchen basins and the lengthy 1 in 60 gradients either side of the summit at Medstead meant that this section was known to railwaymen as “the Alps”.
The line served the needs of the local community and enabled the establishment of commercial watercress growing in the Alresford area. This highly perishable product required rapid transport to get it to market. During both World Wars, the line carried military traffic between the army town of Aldershot and Southampton.
Train services were operated from the start by the London and South Western Railway (LSWR). In 1880 the LSWR took a 999 year lease of the line and in 1884 purchased it outright. The line duly passed to the Southern Railway in 1923 and to British Railways Southern Region in 1948.
In 1937 the line from London Waterloo to Alton was electrified and through trains from Waterloo ceased. From this date a local service of steam “pull-push” trains ran between Alton and Eastleigh. In 1957 this was replaced by an hourly service of diesel-electric trains from Alton to Southampton Terminus. Passenger numbers virtually doubled overnight!
The line was extensively used as a diversionary route during electrification work on the London to Southampton main line in the 1960s. However goods traffic ceased in June 1964 and the local passenger service was increasingly unviable. In December 1967 closure notices were published. John Taylor, deputy clerk of Winchester Rural District Council, led a major local campaign to retain the line. Despite objections and arguments about the economics, the line eventually closed in February 1973.
Part of the route, from Alresford to Alton, was subsequently purchased from British Railways by the Watercress Line and, through the hard work of volunteers, steam trains ran again from Alresford to Ropley from 30 April 1977. Services were extended to Medstead & Four Marks in May 1983 and to Alton in May 1985.
The Watercress Line has now operated the remaining section of the line as a heritage railway for longer than its life under British Railways (1948-73). The railway is operated by Mid-Hants Railway Ltd, whose major shareholder is the Watercress Line Heritage Railway Trust (WLHRT), a registered charity. Many of the locomotives now operating on the line were rescued from a scrapyard in Barry, South Wales, and have been restored to their former glory by our staff and volunteers.
Archiving Information
The Watercress Line Archives
The Watercress Line Heritage Railway Trust has a collection of original documents, artefacts, publications and photographs relating to the Alton to Winchester line up to 1973, and the Watercress Line in preservation from 1973.
This includes in particular materials relating to:
- The Alton, Alresford and Winchester Railway Company (later the Mid-Hants Railway Company), to the London & South Western Railway Company (LSWR), the Southern Railway Company and British Railways Southern Region insofar as relevant to the Mid-Hants and other local lines.
- Winchester and Alton Railway Limited (later Mid-Hants Railway Limited), Mid-Hants Railway Preservation Society Limited and the Watercress Line Heritage Railway Trust.
- Railway staff who worked on the Mid-Hants line and general railway staffing matters relating to the successive operating bodies.
- Passenger and freight traffic over the Mid-Hants and connecting lines.
- Locomotives, rolling stock, trackwork, signalling, telecommunications and equipment used on the Mid-Hants line and more generally by the successive operating bodies.
The Trust’s archivist will be happy to advise further on the extent of our holdings. Items can generally be viewed at Ropley station by prior arrangement with the archivist.
Other materials relating to the Mid-Hants Line are held by:
The National Archives, Kew: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk
Hampshire Record Office, Winchester: www.hants.gov.uk/librariesandarchives/archives
The South Western Circle (the historical society for the LSWR): www.lswr.org and various online photographic archives.
The archivist will be happy to offer general advice about what is available.
Donations
The Trust will be very happy to consider donations of archival materials, including original photographs and slides, which fall within the categories listed above. Please contact the archivist in the first instance.
Please note that we are generally unable to accept donations subject to conditions, or items on loan, although we will endeavour to take into account donors’ wishes wherever possible.
For enquiries regarding the trust’s collections, museums and archives, please contact the Trust’s archivist via: archivist@watercressline.co.uk.
