Ardingly was a railway station which served the

West Sussex West Sussex is a county in South East England on the English Channel coast. The ceremonial county comprises the shire districts of Adur, Arun, Chichester, Horsham, and Mid Sussex, and the boroughs of Crawley and Worthing. Covering an ar ...

village of

Ardingly Ardingly ( ) is an English village and civil parish in the Mid Sussex district of West Sussex, England. The village is in the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty about south of London and east-north-east of the county town of Chich ...

in England. It was opened on 3 September 1883 by the

London, Brighton and South Coast Railway The London, Brighton and South Coast Railway (LB&SCR; known also as the Brighton line, the Brighton Railway or the Brighton) was a railway company in the United Kingdom from 1846 to 1922. Its territory formed a rough triangle, with London at its ...

(LBSCR) closed eighty years later and is currently used as an aggregates depot. The

Bluebell Railway The Bluebell Railway is an heritage line almost entirely in West Sussex in England, except for Sheffield Park which is in East Sussex. It is managed by the Bluebell Railway Preservation Society. It uses steam trains which operate between an ...

owns the trackbed from just east of the station to Horsted Keynes and has long-term plans to rebuild the line.

History

Opening and route

The LBSCR opened a 4½-mile link line between Horsted Keynes on its Lewes to East Grinstead Line and

Haywards Heath Haywards Heath is a town in West Sussex, England, south of London, north of Brighton, south of Gatwick Airport and northeast of the county town, Chichester. Nearby towns include Burgess Hill to the southwest, Horsham to the northwest, Crawl ...

on the

Brighton Main Line The Brighton Main Line (also known as the South Central Main Line) is a major railway line in the United Kingdom that links Brighton, on the south coast of England, with central London. In London the line has two branches, out of and station ...

. Doubled throughout, the line curved away from Horsted Keynes over Sheriff Mill Viaduct (117 yards and named after the nearby Lower Sheriff Farm), climbing on a gradient to reach Lywood Tunnel (218 yards) before continuing on the level for nearly 2 miles to reach the line's only intermediate station at Ardingly. From Ardingly, the line continued for a further mile to reach Copyhold Junction on the Brighton Line, just south of the

Ouse Valley Viaduct The Ouse Valley Viaduct (or the Balcombe Viaduct) carries the London-Brighton Railway Line over the River Ouse in Sussex. It is located to the north of Haywards Heath and the south of Balcombe. Known for its ornate design, the structure ha ...

. At first there was no

signal box In signal processing, a signal is a function that conveys information about a phenomenon. Any quantity that can vary over space or time can be used as a signal to share messages between observers. The ''IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing'' ...

at the junction, with services running on an independent line parallel to the Brighton Main Line as far as the north-facing

bay platform In the United Kingdom and in Australia, a bay platform is a dead-end railway platform at a railway station that has through lines. It is normal for bay platforms to be shorter than their associated through platforms. Overview Bay and islan ...

at Haywards Heath. A box was installed in 1912 which remained in use until 1932 when Haywards Heath was rebuilt with up and down loop platforms, and a new box brought into service there. The line opened without ceremony, with the first service, a goods train, leaving Haywards Heath at 8.34am to collect freight at Ardingly and continue to Horsted Keynes. It was later to prove its worth as a useful alternative to the Brighton Main Line in both wars and for specials to

Lingfield Racecourse Lingfield Park Racecourse (commonly referred to as Lingfield) is a horse racing course at Lingfield in Surrey, United Kingdom. It is owned by the ARC Racing and Leisure Group, formerly Arena Leisure Plc. Lingfield is best known as a winter a ...

.Marx, K., p. 212.

Station building and facilities

Thomas Harrison Myres Thomas Harrison Myres FRIBA (1842 – 3 December 1926) was an English railway architect who designed stations and ancillary buildings for the London, Brighton & South Coast Railway lines that were opened between 1880 and 1883, including several o ...

, the main station building was sited at road level away from the platforms. In common with other Lewes and East Grinstead line stations, it was constructed in a neo-Queen Anne style and presented as a two-storey Victorian country cottage. The upper storey is decoratively timbered with plaster patterning (flower patterns in black on a white background) and projecting slightly; unlike the other stations on the line, Ardingly was never tile-hung. The station's two platforms had fairly basic facilities with platform awnings and an alcove-like waiting room on the down platform; a platform signal cabin was to be found at the western end of the station, overseeing a small goods yard. The yard saw considerable inward traffic in the form of timber for a local

sawmill A sawmill (saw mill, saw-mill) or lumber mill is a facility where logs are cut into lumber. Modern sawmills use a motorized saw to cut logs lengthwise to make long pieces, and crosswise to length depending on standard or custom sizes (dimensi ...

which was subsequently dispatched back out in consignments of prepared boards. The station was run by a staff of four: the stationmaster, signal porter, porter and assistant clerk; the last stationmaster left in 1926, at which point Ardingly came under the control of Horsted Keynes.

Operations

The Ardingly branch had a very infrequent service under the LBSCR and following the

grouping Grouping may refer to: * Muenchian grouping * Principles of grouping * Railways Act 1921, also known as Grouping Act, a reorganisation of the British railway system * Grouping (firearms), the pattern of multiple shots from a sidearm See also ...

when the Southern Railway took over the line when it was mainly serviced by push-pull trains, with some through services to and from

Brighton Brighton () is a seaside resort and one of the two main areas of the City of Brighton and Hove in the county of East Sussex, England. It is located south of London. Archaeological evidence of settlement in the area dates back to the Bronze A ...

. Following

electrification Electrification is the process of powering by electricity and, in many contexts, the introduction of such power by changing over from an earlier power source. The broad meaning of the term, such as in the history of technology, economic histor ...

in 1935, the new electric service comprised some 18 trains on an hourly service to and from Horsted Keynes daily, around half of which terminated at Haywards Heath whilst the rest ran as far as Seaford. The Ardingly branch was closed on Sundays until 1945, and the connection from the up Ardingly line to the up Horsted Keynes main platform was severed.

Camping coach Camping coaches were holiday accommodation offered by many railway companies in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland from the 1930s. The coaches were old passenger vehicles no longer suitable for use in trains, which were converted to ...

es were stationed at Ardingly from Summer 1930 until the end of the war, an acknowledgment of Ardingly's popularity amongst ramblers who were ferried to and from the station in special trains. The station was also busy at the beginning and end of term at Ardingly College when up to 450 packages of luggage were sent and received for around 250 pupils.

Closure

After the closure of the Lewes to East Grinstead line in 1958 by

British Railways British Railways (BR), which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was a state-owned company that operated most of the overground rail transport in Great Britain from 1948 to 1997. It was formed from the nationalisation of the Big Four British rai ...

(BR), the down line between Horsted Keynes and Ardingly was used as a siding for condemned Kent Coast steam stock and new electric stock, whilst single line working with electric train staff was introduced on the up line. The branch was itself closed on 28 October 1963. The section was however still used occasionally to transport rolling stock to the newly established Bluebell Railway, and the last movement along the line was recorded on 13 May 1964 when Terrier No 32636 passed through prior to lifting of the track. The lifting, which had commenced on 15 July, had reached Horsted Keynes by 21 September. During the summer of 1968, Sheriff Mill Viaduct was demolished as the Mid Sussex District Council wished to straighten the bend on New Lane as it curved under the viaduct; BR was only too happy to relieve itself of the maintenance costs of the structure. The Bluebell Railway had been invited to purchase the line in 1962, but could not afford BR's asking price of between £25,000-£30,000 together with the £10,000 needed to maintain the viaduct.Marx, K., p. 249.

Present day

An Amey Roadstone plant (now Hanson Aggregates) was established in the Ardingly goods yard shortly after closure of the line, and was served by a daily freight working from Haywards Heath using the former down local line. Access to the up main and up local lines at Copyhold Junction has been severed. The new occupant demolished the station platforms (except for a short length of the former up platform near the road bridge). The track in the station was removed and a loop installed at the southern end of the former goods yard area. The station buildings remain, used as offices by Hanson Aggregates. A pair of ornamental cast iron station canopy brackets and the ticket office window were sold as lots 302 and 303 by auctioneers T. Bannister & co. at their July 1983 auction at the Ardingly historic vehicle spectacular show at the South of England Showground.

Preservation future

In 1997 the Heritage

acquired the trackbed, only as far as the Aggregate Depot boundary at Ardingly, and holds long-term aspirations to restore and reopen the branch. To help bridge the gap created by the missing (Sheriff Mill) viaduct, spoil from the excavation of Imberhorne cutting (part of the works necessary for the Bluebell's extension to

East Grinstead East Grinstead is a town in West Sussex, England, near the East Sussex, Surrey, and Kent borders, south of London, northeast of Brighton, and northeast of the county town of Chichester. Situated in the extreme northeast of the county, the civ ...

) was used to extend existing embankments, towards Ardingly. Re-signalling work had also taken place at Horsted Keynes, with signals being installed in preparation for the eventual re-laying of the track. Mid Sussex District Council has accordingly safeguarded the route of the line from re-development that would be prejudicial to its reinstatement. Two public consultation sessions were held at Ardingly in September 2022, to set out proposals which have been submitted to Mid-Sussex District Council.

References

Sources

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External links

Ardingly railway station on Subterranea Britannica.

Images of the disused Ardingly branch on the derekhayward.co.uk website.