The mystery of Bengeworth Station in Hampton
Between October 1864 and June 1953 there was a railway station in Hampton. On the old OS map below it shows the station on the south side of Pershore Road. The station was part of the Midland Railway line from Ashchurch to Barnt Green in Birmingham.
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The ‘Evesham Branch’ of the Midland line branched off the main Birmingham and Gloucester line at Ashchurch and rejoined it at Barnt Green. In between it stopped at Beckford, Ashton-under-Hill, Hinton, Bengeworth (in Hampton), Evesham, Harvington, Salford Priors, Broom Junction, Wixford, Alecester, Coughton, Studley & Astwood Bank, Redditch, Alvechurch and finally Barnt Green. The total length of the line was 33 miles. |
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Bengeworth station was opened on 1st of October 1864. It lay to the south of Pershore Road and to the west of the Church. |
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The railway line to the north, to Evesham, ran along the concrete road that now leads to the Severn Trent works. The track to the south is still partly visible and some of it is accessible as a footpath to Hinton. To accommodate the railway line there was a bridge over Pershore Road. The picture (left) shows the bridge from the junction with School Road by the Cider Mill pub. |
Bengeworth station was closed to both passengers and goods on the 8th of June 1953. In the 1950’s the volume of traffic on the railways dropped sharply and in 1964 the line was finally closed and the track was eventually lifted. Why Bengeworth station closed so much earlier is not entirely clear but it may have had something to do with its proximity to Evesham. |
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Bengeworth to Evesham
From Bengeworth the trains moved onto Evesham Midland station (right).
Evesham was the most important place on the line. At Evesham there was a connection with the Great Western Railway (GWR) from Oxford to Worcester. Evesham station was important for passengers but also for goods. |
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| The Vale of Evesham was mainly agricultural and the arrival of the railways meant that the produce could be sold to markets in the industrial towns and cities further afield. There were two stations in Evesham, one for the GWR and one for the Midland Railway. They were separated by a road. The Midland Railway station was to the south of the GWR station and has long gone now, as has the bridge over the river Avon. The existing railway bridge is the one for the old GWR line. The bridge that serviced the Midland line was to the south of the GWR bridge. The remnants of the bridge are still visible from the river side. From Evesham the thus far double line from Ashchurch, became a single line to Barnt Green. |
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| The Midland train from Redditch to Ashchurch arriving at Evesham station. |
The GWR and Midland railway lines just before they parted. The GWR curved to the north to Worcester and the Midland curved to the South towards Bengeworth. |
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From Evesham the railway line continued to the villages of Harvington and Salford Priors before arriving at Broom Junction. This was the junction of Midland and Stratford-upon-Avon & Midland Junction railways. Passengers could change at Stratford and go as far as Banbury and Northampton.
From Broom Junction the railway continued via Studley and Redditch to Barnt Green in Birmingham where it joined the main Gloucester to Birmingham line.
Now on to the mystery of Bengeworth station in Hampton. There already was a station called Hampton-in-Arden on the Midland line to the north of Barnt Green. To avoid confusion the station in Hampton was called Bengeworth despite the fact that the actual village of Bengeworth was almost 2 miles away.
Source: ‘An illustrated History of the Ashchurch to Barnt Green Line – The Evesham Route’ by R.J. Essery |
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