Avonmouth Line

History and Working

P D Rendall

• Publisher: Crowood
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781785004384
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Rail Transportation
• Index: Technology & Engineering

The Avonmouth Line - History and Working describes the railway built between the northern suburbs of Bristol and the docks constructed at the mouth of the River Avon, from its inception in 1865. It describes how a short passenger line was first constructed, running from a station in the Avon Gorge at Hotwells to the new Docks. The Midland Railway and then the Great Western Railway took advantage of the rising popularity of the Avonmouth docks, and additional routes were constructed at Kingswood Junction on the Bristol-Gloucester line, and from a junction with the Great Western at Pilning. Contents include the beginnings of the line as the 'Bristol Port Railway and Pier'; the docks lines at their height of use and during wartime; post 1950s run-downs and attempts to close the line; the line in 2018 and finally, duties and memories of the staff who worked the line. P D Rendall has had a life-long career in railway engineering and is now a published author and social historian.

CHAPTER 1

The Beginnings

The story of the Avonmouth, Bristol line begins in the 1860s, at the height of Victorian engineering and the Empire. The Bristol City Docks were proving inadequate in servicing the needs of the rapidly developing shipping industry, and solutions had to be found. After a minor start with a riverside branch along the Avon Gorge to the mouth of the Avon, the railways expanded in tandem with the expansion of the docks. What is now usually referred to as the ‘Avonmouth branch’ became an important and busy complex of lines, both within and outside the docks themselves.

The River Avon flows through the City of Bristol and for around eight miles winds its muddy way out through a rocky gorge to the River Severn. Bristol has been a centre of trading for centuries and in the days when it boasted a castle, there were quays below the walls of that castle where ships could tie up to discharge and load their cargoes. By the time of Henry III, trade had grown so much that extra facilities were required. Commencing in 1239, the course of the River Frome was diverted where it met the Avon, and changed and straightened to form a deeper water channel known as St Augustine’s Trench. After eight years’ work, a new quay had also been built to replace the old Avon wharfs.

However, the Avon is tidal and over the following centuries, whilst the docks flourished, ships grew in size and captains were kept waiting for high tide, either in the docks or out in the Severn. Furthermore, because the ships were getting bigger, it was becoming more difficult for them to negotiate the sharp bends in the Avon Gorge and they often grounded on the narrow Horseshoe bend. They could also end up grounded when the tide went out; they were usually lost in this situation, breaking their backs, but even if they were in a fit state to be refloated, with assistance, a ship stranded on the mud inevitably caused delays to other shipping. Furthermore, ships were unable to load or unload at Bristol docks when the tide was out and were left grounded on the mud at the dockside until high tide.

In order to alleviate the problem, new docks were constructed a little way down the Avon, at Sea Mills. These failed to find favour with anyone as they were far away from the city with no means of transporting goods onwards. Another dock at Hotwells was equally unsuccessful, for similar reasons.

The tidal problem was solved by the construction of the ‘Floating Harbour’, which, by means of diverting the Avon through a new channel known (to this day) as the New Cut, and providing locks at each end of the docks, enabled water to be kept in the docks area all the time. Ships would enter and leave via the locks. The idea had originally been put forward in 1767 by one William Champion, a Quaker industrialist, but the ‘powers that be’ at the time thought it impracticable so it made no progress.

Bristol’s Avon Gorge is a tourist attraction today. If the Victorian idea had been taken seriously, this view would have included an area of commercial docks. The (now-singled) Bristol–Avonmouth railway can be seen.

By the 1840s, ships had grown even more, and the larger, ocean-going ‘iron-clad’ ships found that they were unable to manoeuvre through the sharp bends. The debacle of the newly built SS Great Britain getting jammed in the locks, when an attempt was made to move it from the city docks where it had been built, prompted calls for a new dock. It was more than a little embarrassing when it was found that, once out of Bristol City Docks and along the Avon to the Severn, the ship was unable to return to Bristol City Docks. In fact, it spent a large portion of its working life going to and from Liverpool docks instead – and Liverpool was one of Bristol’s great rivals in the shipping trade. It was not just a lack of space in the city docks; the age-old problem of ships getting stranded in the mud and on the sharp bends in the Avon was ever present. Something needed to be done. Trade was beginning to suffer, with Bristol losing out to other British ports. In 1861 a plan was approved to build a deep-water pier at the mouth of the Avon. The idea was that large vessels could unload part of their cargo and then proceed upstream to the city docks, without the need to wait for the tide.

The plan, promoted by a company named the ‘Bristol Port Railway and Pier Co.’, also incorporated a railway line to run from Bristol to the area where the new pier would be built. Opened in March 1865, and named the Port Railway and Pier Line, it started at what is now Hotwells on the riverbank, at a spot just underneath the Gloucestershire pier of the yet-to-be-completed Clifton Suspension Bridge. A single line of rails would run for 5 miles 52 chains to the Avon estuary at Avonmouth. The new line thus did not connect with the Port of Bristol nor was there yet a completed pier at Avonmouth for it to use. There were stations at Sea Mills, Shirehampton (‘for Pill’), Dock station (Gloucester Road) and the line’s terminus, ‘Avonmouth Station’. The latter had a run-round loop but was effectively in the middle of nowhere.

Avon Mouth, as the area was then known, had very little to attract people. There was a scattering of small farms and a few cottages, along with an artillery range, but that was about it. There was no specific reason at that stage for people in any numbers to want to travel to Avonmouth. Despite this, another enterprising company came into being and, in April 1865, opened a hotel complete with ‘pleasure garden’ on land adjacent to the terminus station. According to the records, the proprietor in 1881 was one Annie Woodrow, an Irish woman. Annie employed a Scot, Mary Wilson, as a barmaid and Jane Parsley from Almondsbury in Gloucestershire as a waitress. Sarah Foster from Winterbourne in Gloucestershire fulfilled the role of domestic servant, whilst Henry House from Somerset was the ostler.

It was hardly surprising that the hotel failed to make any money. Passengers were the initial cargo for the new railway line but a day trip to what was a muddy, grassy area at the mouth of the Avon hardly drew in the crowds, even if there was, for the more morbid members of the public, the site of a gibbet pole on the marshy area known as ‘Dunball Island’, to the north of the estuary. It did not help that the ‘Port and Pier’ line, as it was popularly known, was not connected to the national railway system and was thus without the prospect of excursion traffic to and from the area.

The Victorians were nothing if not keen to seize on an opportunity however remote from its goal. Not far from the Bristol terminus of the Port and Pier line was another railway – one that was not visible to the public. The Clifton Rocks funicular railway commenced at a station near to Sion Hill, in Clifton, and ran in a tunnel through what was known as St Vincent’s Rock down to the lower terminus adjacent to the river and a few hundred yards from the Port and Pier station. Opened in 1873, it was hugely popular for its first year and supplied to the Port and Pier curious passengers wishing to make a day out of travelling ‘down’ from the heights of Clifton to the Avon estuary. However, two white elephants do not add up to a going concern and, after the novelty of the first year, the Rocks Railway began to lose passengers in droves; by default, so did the Port and Pier. The Rocks Railway was a financial failure and by 1905 was in receivership.

Although the demise of the Rocks Railway was not the main reason for the lack of passengers wishing to travel to Avonmouth, it was perhaps not a surprise that the Bristol Port Railway and Pier Co. was also soon in financial difficulty. The directors recognized that, rather than standing alone, the Port and Pier would need to get connected to the growing national railway network. In 1867, the company applied for and received, by an Act of Parliament, permission to construct a railway from a junction on the Midland Railway’s Bristol–Gloucester line near Royate Hill, Bristol. The junction with the Bristol–Gloucester line was, rather inappropriately, named Kingswood junction, although it was located nowhere near the district of Kingswood.

From Kingswood junction the line would run through Eastville to Narroways Hill, where it was to cross the GWR Bristol and South Wales Union line via a bridge, and onwards through Ashley Hill (where it would connect with a short branch from Narroways junction on the Bristol and South Wales Union line).

Continuing onwards through a short tunnel under Ashley Hill, the line passed through the suburb of Montpelier and through Redland to Clifton Down, where it would tunnel under the Durdham Downs to eventually meet the Port and Pier between Hotwells and Sea Mills. The junction was reasonably close to the nearby posh suburb of Sneyd Park, after which it was named.

As the Bristol and Gloucester was built to the broad gauge, so the line to Avonmouth was to be broad gauge. It would also be double-track from Kingswood and Narroways junctions through to the Sneyd Park junction; from there it would be single-track to Avonmouth.

Work commenced and staggered on for two years, after which the contractor failed and construction stopped. Meanwhile, a new dock had been planned by the newly incorporated Bristol Port and Channel Dock Company, at the mouth of the River Avon. To all intents and purposes, this new site for docks was the way forward – it would be easier for the increasingly bigger ships to dock there – yet, in spite of this, another scheme was put forward to build a dam across the River Avon near its estuary with the Severn and create one long floating harbour all the way downstream to the city docks. This somewhat novel idea was another that did not come to fruition. The city docks continued in use for smaller craft, but the focus shifted to building the new dock at Avonmouth.

Seeing a chance to gain control of what could be lucrative future docks traffic, both the Midland Railway and Great Western Railway companies stepped in and took over the work on the new railway. Now standard gauge (4 feet 8 and a half inches), the Clifton Extension line was completed in 1875 but trains were unable to run because the signalling at Sneyd Park junction did not meet Board of Trade standards when inspected. It was not until 1885 that the line was opened for traffic throughout, from Hotwells and Kingswood junctions to Avonmouth station. The delays were mainly due to the Port and Pier’s permanent way being found to be unfit for the extra traffic expected. Eventually, the pier itself was completed and the railway, being laid into the dock area, gained a Pier station.

Bristol City Docks in the 1960s before Avonmouth finally took all the shipping. (Len Worrall)

The line opened for freight traffic on 24 February 1877 and for passenger traffic on 1 September 1885. The new Avonmouth Dock also opened on the same date as the Clifton Extension, in February 1877.

The joint line opened with three new stations: Montpelier, Redland and Clifton Down, in addition to the existing Port Railway and Pier stations at Sea Mills, and the Shirehampton and Avonmouth Dock station. All the new stations were sited to attract passenger and freight traffic from the new Bristol suburbs. Clifton Down in particular was but a short walk from the zoological gardens and the open spaces of Durdham Downs. Sidings were provided, mainly for coal traffic, at Montpelier and Clifton Down stations. There were signal boxes at Ashley Hill junction, Montpelier, Clifton Down and Sneyd Park junction (where the PR&P joined the Clifton Extension). Signal boxes at Shirehampton, Avonmouth Dock junction and Avonmouth Dock – where a small signal box was built adjacent to the level crossing where the line crossed Gloucester Road on its way to the terminus station – were already in use.

Another 1960s view of Bristol City Docks. (Len Worrall)

Avonmouth’s first dock and pier (1901 OS map). ‘Avonmouth Dock Sidings’ became Old Yard.

Signal boxes later opened at Horseshoe Point (1904) and Crown Brickyard level crossing (Avonmouth) (1892). The latter controlled a level crossing and also the sidings connection into the small brickworks, from which it got its name.

With the arrival of the MR/GWR Joint Clifton Extension in Avonmouth, the Great Western gained a share of both freight and passenger traffic into the docks from the south. Forward thinking was one of the Great Western’s great attributes and it was already planning ahead. The company recognized that the new docks would inevitably expand and attract more traffic than the existing railway could handle, and that the area would also attract other industries. Not content to share access to the new docks with the Midland Railway, GWR was anxious to cash in on the traffic generated by the opening of its Severn Tunnel in 1886. It was clear that there was potential in a new line connecting South Wales to Avonmouth Docks, and GWR set its sights on its own links into the docks area. The question was, which route should it take?

North of the Avonmouth area, at Pilning, there were still the remains of the section of the Bristol and South Wales Union line to New Passage pier on the banks of the River Severn, which had been abandoned after the opening of the Severn Tunnel. The existing stub of the Bristol and South Wales Union line’s original formation from a junction with the new line to the Severn Tunnel at Pilning was still in use as a siding, as far as the Severn Tunnel pumping station at Sea Walls. This could be extended to Avonmouth. The plan was therefore to use this formation for the new line and continue southwards, hugging the coastline.

To this end, the Great Western sought permission via an Act of Parliament to build a line direct from Avonmouth to New Passage, on the banks of the Severn, where it would connect with the existing section of the old route. The resulting GWR Act of 1890 authorized the company to construct the line between the junction with the BSWU line at Pilning and a junction with the Clifton Extension sidings at the Bristol end of Avonmouth. Known as the Avonmouth and Severn Tunnel Railway, it was single throughout.

It was to be a comparatively easy route, being more or less level all the way, and would run from Pilning straight towards the coast before turning 90 degrees south to Sea Walls, where the siding remained. The new route was to curve inland again before straightening and passing through the village of Severn Beach. From Severn Beach, it would run along the coast as far as Hallen Marsh, where, as the coast curved outwards, the railway would stay more or less straight for almost a mile before moving coast-wards to pass a matter of yards to the west of the Port and Pier terminus station at Avonmouth. It would then cross Gloucester Road on the level a hundred yards or so away from the Port and Pier Avonmouth Dock station crossing. The line was to be freight only.

The line was opened on 5 February 1900. There was no connection or interchange between the two lines, except through the dock sidings, until 1902, when a temporary connection was laid between them, south of the Port and Pier’s terminus station.

The new century saw a continued rapid expansion of the facilities at Avonmouth. In 1897...