Another Old Photo

[Lucan]

This might be a tall order.

I have been sorting through old photos of my father's, and found this. Does anyone know where it was? I suspect it might be Thorpeness Halt on the GE Aldeburgh Branch, as my parents did holiday around there once or twice. I guess those coach bodies might have been 4 or 6-wheelers and perhaps re-used as camping coaches.

I've learned a lesson from this project - write dates and titles on the backs of photos! although in this digital age most never get printed.

 

[Bevan Price]

Yes - see Thorpeness on the disused stations site. The same coaches can be seen in the first photo.

http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/t/thorpeness/index.shtml

 

[Lucan]

Thanks, and that was a quick reply! I had not thought of looking at that Disused Stations website.

It is interesting that the "Undated" photo on the website appears to have been taken around the same time as my father's photo, because both pictures show some kind of ladder structure leaning against the central carriage body.; this structure is absent from other pictures. I would guess that my father took his photo around 1960. The central carriage body looks as if it is the station office (but would a "halt" have an office?), or perhaps it served as a platelayers hut.

 

[WesternLancer]

This might be a tall order.

I have been sorting through old photos of my father's, and found this. Does anyone know where it was? I suspect it might be Thorpeness Halt on the GE Aldeburgh Branch, as my parents did holiday around there once or twice. I guess those coach bodies might have been 4 or 6-wheelers and perhaps re-used as camping coaches.

I've learned a lesson from this project - write dates and titles on the backs of photos! although in this digital age most never get printed.

Great photo! Would they have been camping coaches?

 

[Taunton]

Didn't Gerry Fiennes, the prominent BR manager/author, live in Thorpeness in the 1959s-60s? But I believe he drove to Saxmundham to catch the daily through service to his Liverpool Street office.

 

[Lucan]

Great photo! Would they have been camping coaches?

The memory is coming back to me of that occasion. I was small and my family was camping nearby. We came here on a summer evening stroll. We walked up the platform, and inside the furthest windows of the far coach was a table with half-a-dozen Tilley lamps on it - the same type of lamp we used in our tent. I guess they were for placing in those "gas" lamp-posts. In the photos, both of those further two coaches look too rough around the edges to be camping coaches; their doors seem to have been replaced by rustic timber ones. The nearest coach might have been a camping coach though.

The photos on the Disused Stations website show a goods siding and yard. Can a "Halt" have a goods yard and offices? Or was it a halt anyway? The station name sign on the platform only seems to say "Thorpeness", although a bush there may be obscuring the word "Halt". Of course, there must have been a crossing keeper there during service hours, and shelter for him.

I visited the area a few times around 1990, and there was still a hump in the road where the level crossing was. Thorpeness is a deliberately quaint place. Many of its houses look as if they have come out of a fairy-tale, including the House in the Clouds, plus a windmill that I believe was placed there as an ornament, and a boating lake big enough to get lost in. The halt was nearly a mile from the village.

 

[Cricketer8for9]

The location for the station is visible on the ground when playing at the, splendid, golf course. I suspect in the early days access to the hotel and golf course might have formed a significant part of the patronage.

 

[WesternLancer]

The memory is coming back to me of that occasion. I was small and my family was camping nearby. We came here on a summer evening stroll. We walked up the platform, and inside the furthest windows of the far coach was a table with half-a-dozen Tilley lamps on it - the same type of lamp we used in our tent. I guess they were for placing in those "gas" lamp-posts. In the photos, both of those further two coaches look too rough around the edges to be camping coaches; their doors seem to have been replaced by rustic timber ones. The nearest coach might have been a camping coach though.

The photos on the Disused Stations website show a goods siding and yard. Can a "Halt" have a goods yard and offices? Or was it a halt anyway? The station name sign on the platform only seems to say "Thorpeness", although a bush there may be obscuring the word "Halt". Of course, there must have been a crossing keeper there during service hours, and shelter for him.

I visited the area a few times around 1990, and there was still a hump in the road where the level crossing was. Thorpeness is a deliberately quaint place. Many of its houses look as if they have come out of a fairy-tale, including the House in the Clouds, plus a windmill that I believe was placed there as an ornament, and a boating lake big enough to get lost in. The halt was nearly a mile from the village.

Interesting to read your memories. Makes it look like the coach with the tilley lamps was being used as a gangers or p-way store or some such.

I agree with you about halt - I though by definition it meant it had no sidings / staff / good facilities etc - but maybe that was a rule of thumb and not a firm definition as it were.

When would your dad have taken the picture, roughly?

 

[Lucan]

When would your dad have taken the picture, roughly?

I guess around 1960.

 

[mailbyrail]

Some Halts did have staff although many did not.
I always remember being surprised to find Box (Mill Lane) Halt had a booking office which looked to have been built at road level along with the platform up above when it opoened in 1936. Don't know when it was staffed though, it wasn't when I visited not long before closure
Thorpeness was listed as being Goods and Passenger without any reference to Halt in the 1956 Handbook of Stations. Michael Quick states it was a Halt until 1933/4

 

[WesternLancer]

I guess around 1960.

gosh - of note - I'd assumed that pic could have been eg 1940s for example or early 50s. Remarkable that such 'buildings' lasted until the diesel age

 

[Taunton]

If you look at the map on the Disused Stations link, you can see the station was in the middle of nowhere, far from the village. In those times there would unlikely have been a public 240v electricity supply there, and it wouldn't be worth putting in a pole route across the fields and a transformer just for this isolated little-used station, which is why they stuck with oil lamps and coal fires to the end, as they always had.

There were several isolated stations around the country near the big new nuclear power stations of the era, like this one, that had no electricity supply, and received comments about this.

 

[Ploughman]

Rather than a set of camping coaches I would guess at local PW and Station store facilities.

 

[WesternLancer]

If you look at the map on the Disused Stations link, you can see the station was in the middle of nowhere, far from the village. In those times there would unlikely have been a public 240v electricity supply there, and it wouldn't be worth putting in a pole route across the fields and a transformer just for this isolated little-used station, which is why they stuck with oil lamps and coal fires to the end, as they always had.

There were several isolated stations around the country near the big new nuclear power stations of the era, like this one, that had no electricity supply, and received comments about this.

Points well made Taunton.

 

[DelW]

Great photo! Would they have been camping coaches?

Rather than a set of camping coaches I would guess at local PW and Station store facilities.

The text on the disused stations page linked from post #2 states:
".... with three obsolete Great Eastern passenger coaches adapted for the usual station functions and so it remained until closure."

 

[WesternLancer]

The text on the disused stations page linked from post #2 states:
".... with three obsolete Great Eastern passenger coaches adapted for the usual station functions and so it remained until closure."

Ah thanks - I missed that in the general description of the line, which I have now read more carefully.

 

[Lucan]

the station was in the middle of nowhere, far from the village.

They could not have taken the line closer to Thorpeness without having to cross the Meare (or drain it), a large lake stretching for nearly a mile inland from the village. In any case when the branch was built (1860) there was practically nothing at Thorpeness but a few fishing huts - the village was created from 1910 onwards. The railway took an optimum route from the small industrial town of Leiston to the Victorian resort of Aldeburgh.

I think that www.disused-stations.org.uk/t/thorpeness/index.shtml misses the point where it says "A third station serving the resort of Thorpeness was opened a few days before the start of WW1. .... [it] seemed to have a promising future. .....[but] The resort failed to develop and the station had always been little used other than serving the nearby golf course." Thorpeness was never intended to be a "resort". It was meant as an exclusive village for the wealthy and/or retired. Think Portmeirion, but without the fence round it. The last thing they would have wanted was weekend trippers, and I expect that the planning regulations there are still pretty strict today. Of course, these days Thorpness is now a low-key tourist attraction after all.

If they needed a train, the residents of Thorpeness would probably have been happy to travel by pony and trap or their chauffeured motor car to the more comfortable station at Aldeburgh, only two miles away, which had already become a resort for the gentry in Victorian times. It was particularly patronised by members of literary and intellectual circles. Thomas Hardy and Virginia Wolfe took holidays there and they would have come by train. Of course that cultural background continues into the Aldeburgh art and music festivals of the present day.

 

[WesternLancer]

They could not have taken the line closer to Thorpeness without having to cross the Meare (or drain it), a large lake stretching for nearly a mile inland from the village. In any case when the branch was built (1860) there was practically nothing at Thorpeness but a few fishing huts - the village was created from 1910 onwards. The railway took an optimum route from the small industrial town of Leiston to the Victorian resort of Aldeburgh.

I think that www.disused-stations.org.uk/t/thorpeness/index.shtml misses the point where it says "A third station serving the resort of Thorpeness was opened a few days before the start of WW1. .... [it] seemed to have a promising future. .....[but] The resort failed to develop and the station had always been little used other than serving the nearby golf course." Thorpeness was never intended to be a "resort". It was meant as an exclusive village for the wealthy and/or retired. Think Portmeirion, but without the fence round it. The last thing they would have wanted was weekend trippers, and I expect that the planning regulations there are still pretty strict today. Of course, these days Thorpness is now a low-key tourist attraction after all.

If they needed a train, the residents of Thorpeness would probably have been happy to travel by pony and trap or their chauffeured motor car to the more comfortable station at Aldeburgh, only two miles away, which had already become a resort for the gentry in Victorian times. It was particularly patroniosed by members of literary and intellectual circles. Thomas Hardy and Virginia Wolfe took holidays there and they would have come by train. Of course that cultural background continues into the Aldeburgh art and music festivals of the present day.

thanks - very interesting observations about an area I do not know at all. Nice to read.