The Railway came to Somerton in the 1850s. The impact on the village was massive: through the employment it provided, the opportunities for travel, and the local interest resulting from accidents and incidents — including the passage of royal trains. The railway's finest hours came during the two World Wars, but the volume of traffic undermined its infrastructure, and in 1964 Somerton Station finally closed, a victim of Dr Beeching's cuts.
Great Western Railway map showing the Cherwell Valley line through Somerton, Heyford and the Oxford to Banbury route
Construction
Royal Assent was granted to the Great Western Railway on 4th August 1845 to extend their service from Oxford to Rugby. In 1849 the planned route was changed to go to Birmingham and was surveyed by Brunel. Landowners were not always willing to sell their land, holding out for higher compensation. Lord Jersey had to be promised a station at Somerton in exchange for his agreement to the route. Parishes along the way were compensated with a contribution to their rates — in Somerton’s case, £1 in 1848.
By autumn 1849 the total cost of the Oxford to Banbury section had reached £760,000, the earthworks alone costing £85,000. The railway navvies who came to build the line would have had a significant impact on the quiet village community. The regulars earned 4 shillings a day; local farm labourers could earn 2s 6d a day working on the line — double their normal wages, though the work was hard and accidents frequent. Laying of the track began in the spring of 1850 and the rural branch line opened on 2nd September 1850. Somerton Station itself opened in September 1854 — a simple wooden structure, as it always remained, with room for one siding, a cattle dock, and space for the coal merchant to unload his wagons. When a station opened at Somerton in Somerset in 1906 it was renamed “Somerton Oxon,” and later again “Fritwell & Somerton.” The railway brought work to the village: station staff, signal men, platelayers and porters all became part of village life. Albert Fox remembered the daily rhythms well: twelve trains stopped each day at Somerton right up to the closure in 1964, with the first departure at 6.05 a.m. Ted Giles and Walter Mold were the porters he remembered; Ralph Hazell and Harry Edwards in the signal box; Ganger Powell leading the group of platelayers who were permanently employed at Somerton, including Ted Coombes, Bert Garrett and David Waddup, who lived to be ninety and guarded the smoke hole in the Ardley tunnel during the First World War. The Station Master Giles — photographed tending his garden with a steam train passing behind him — was equally known for his horticulture and for his role in the V.P.A.
The Railway's Role in Village Life
For children growing up in Somerton in the 1930s and 1940s, the railway was part of daily life. Children waved to trains from the playground. One former pupil recalls catching the train to school in Kidlington — and the terrifying near miss one winter evening when she crossed the track and only just missed an oncoming train, which took her satchel. "That's enough," her father said. "You're not going on the train again."
The railway also brought visitors from further afield. During the May Day celebrations, the children would come down to meet the train and "when it stopped they said their verses and sang their songs to the passengers — which must have been a lovely sight."
During both World Wars the railway played a strategic role that would have been visible to every villager. In the First World War, special trains running from Banbury to Oxford picked up men mobilised into the Oxford & Bucks Light Infantry — seen off with great enthusiasm, though all too soon there were convoys of hospital trains making their way up the valley from Southampton to military hospitals in the Midlands, the men carried in mail vans converted to hospital wards with 16 beds in two tiers. 2.5 million casualties were transported in total. The additional wartime traffic put enormous strain on the line, and accidents multiplied. On the morning of 12th November 1914, at 7.10 a.m., a ballast train standing on the up line at Somerton was struck from behind by a goods train. The Somerton ganger had spotted its approach and warned his men in time for them all to jump clear. The impact was violent: the guard’s van broke in two, the coach was severely splintered, and three compartments were completely smashed. The photograph of the wreckage — printed as a postcard, as dramatic accidents often were in that era — survives in the village record. Four years later, on 8th November 1918, came a second collision: a ballast train was run into by a goods train that had passed through the signals; the guard Ernest Justice was seriously wounded and a yard ganger, John Boffin, was injured. Both were taken by engine to Oxford Infirmary. Both tracks were closed for the rest of the morning while breakdown gangs repaired the damage — a fitting, if grim, moment, as the Armistice was signed three days later.
G.W.R. Accident at Somerton, 12 November 1914 — the wrecked guard’s van and derailed wagons. The Somerton ganger warned his men in time; all jumped clear.
Former station master Charles Edward Gibbons served at Somerton in 1881, living in the cottage next to the pub according to the census records. In 1884 he emigrated with his family from Liverpool to the Port of Halifax, Nova Scotia — one of many threads connecting Somerton to a wider world. The railway also wove itself into the memories of those who grew up near it. Betty Gaul remembered her aunt and uncle Alice and Jack Nash, who lived in the signal box cottage: as a child she would often bring Jack his lunch from Alice. Norman Merritt’s uncle, Dick Woodfield, was a GWR driver who lived in Somerton. Such names — the station masters, the porters, the drivers, the crossing keepers — represent the human scale of a line that ran for over a century through the centre of village life.
Accidents were part of railway life. In November 1852 a delayed express speeding towards Heyford at 60 mph collided with a local train reversing to pick up a truck. Passengers were bruised and shaken but the driver, jumping onto the track, fell against a point lever and was fatally injured. In July 1855 a carter crossing with four horses and a load of hay from Fritwell meadow was struck by the 4.50 up train from Banbury, the wagon knocked to pieces and the shaft-horse killed; fortunately the carter and three other horses escaped unhurt. These incidents would have been much talked about in the village. From the 1850s to the 1870s, the royal train carrying Queen Victoria would pass through the Cherwell Valley three or four times a year, driven slowly so that locals could glimpse the royal party. A pilot engine was sent fifteen minutes ahead; all goods trains in the opposite direction were stopped. When it passed in the evening the lit carriages would have been a spectacle in the dark valley.
In 1872 two workers based at Somerton — Robert Golder and a father and two sons named Andrews from Wales — contracted smallpox. The Andrews family died, and their deaths were registered by George Dew on the steps of the Railway Tavern in Water Street. Golder recovered and was looked after in a house next door. The Railway Tavern itself occupied a significant place in village life throughout this period — both as a pub and as the practical centre of transport-related activity along Water Street.
In the Second World War the build-up to D-Day brought extraordinary traffic through the Cherwell Valley — over 1,200 freight and military trains in just one week. In September 1939, trainloads of evacuees from London arrived in Banbury: 800 on the Saturday, 1,600 on the Sunday, 800 more on the Monday. Troops evacuated from Dunkirk passed through the valley, many throwing messages from carriage windows hoping the station telegraph staff would relay news of their survival to their families. By VE Day the railways were worn out, and nationalisation followed in 1948. The appointment of Dr Beeching in 1961 sealed Somerton’s fate. Fritwell & Somerton saw its last train call on Saturday 31st October 1964. Albert Fox remembered: “12 trains stopped each day at Somerton right up to the closure” — a fact which, stated plainly, says more about the loss than any lament could.
— Somerton Village History Project archive