Blake Hall is a disused former station on the

London Underground The London Underground (also known simply as the Underground or by its nickname the Tube) is a rapid transit system serving Greater London and some parts of the adjacent ceremonial counties of England, counties of Buckinghamshire, Essex and He ...

in the

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authority ...

Stanford Rivers Stanford Rivers is a village and civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counti ...

, and south from the village of

Bobbingworth Bobbingworth is a village and civil parish in the Epping Forest district of Essex, England. The village is situated approximately north-west from Chipping Ongar, west from the county town of Chelmsford, and lies off the A414 road. Bobbingwort ...

Essex Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and G ...

. It was latterly on the Central line, between

North Weald North Weald Bassett or simply North Weald is a village and civil parish in the Epping Forest district of Essex, England. The village is within the North Weald Ridges and Valleys landscape area. A market is held every Saturday and Bank Holiday Mo ...

and Ongar, but was originally served by the Epping to Ongar shuttle service branch line. It was opened in 1865 and named after

Blake Hall Blake Hall is a country house and gardens in the village and civil parish of Bobbingworth, near Chipping Ongar, Essex. The house incorporates an original fabric dating from the 17th century or older, but was largely rebuilt in the 18th century ...

, a country house located a mile or so to the northeast and inhabited by a family of substantial local land-owners. The station was closed in 1981.

History

Blake Hall railway station 1828549 ee6f929d

Blake Hall station was opened by the

Great Eastern Railway The Great Eastern Railway (GER) was a pre-grouping British railway company, whose main line linked London Liverpool Street to Norwich and which had other lines through East Anglia. The company was grouped into the London and North Eastern R ...

on 24 April 1865, serving principally as a

goods yard A goods station (also known as a goods yard or goods depot) or freight station is, in the widest sense, a railway station where, either exclusively or predominantly, goods (or freight), such as merchandise, parcels, and manufactured items, are lo ...

carrying agricultural produce from the nearby farms into London.

Steam locomotive A steam locomotive is a locomotive that provides the force to move itself and other vehicles by means of the expansion of steam. It is fuelled by burning combustible material (usually coal, oil or, rarely, wood) to heat water in the locomot ...

s operated 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 ...

for the Underground ran a shuttle service from

Epping Epping may refer to: Places Australia * Epping, New South Wales, a suburb of Sydney ** Epping railway station, Sydney * Electoral district of Epping, the corresponding seat in the New South Wales Legislative Assembly * Epping Forest, Kearns, a he ...

to Ongar, stopping at Blake Hall, from 1949 until 1957, when the line was electrified and taken over by the Underground's Central line. On 18 April 1966 the goods yard was closed and Blake Hall became a dedicated passenger station. On 17 October 1966, Sunday services were withdrawn. Blake Hall became reputed as the least-used station on the entire Underground network. Fare subsidies provided on the rest of the system were not provided on this part of the line because local government agencies for Essex and London failed to agree on their respective public transport responsibilities, and Blake Hall station was located a considerable distance from any substantial settlement. By the time the last train ran on 31 October 1981, the station was reported to have only 17 passengers per day. It was permanently closed on 2 November 1981. The Epping to Ongar branch line was closed 13 years later, on 30 September 1994. Blake Hall's station building has since been converted into a private home and the line passing the station site is now privately owned and operated as a

heritage railway A heritage railway or heritage railroad (US usage) is a railway operated as living history to re-create or preserve railway scenes of the past. Heritage railways are often old railway lines preserved in a state depicting a period (or periods) i ...

by the

Epping Ongar Railway The Epping Ongar Railway is a heritage railway in south-west Essex, England, run by a small number of paid staff and a team of volunteers. It was the final section of the Great Eastern Railway branch line, later the London Underground's Centr ...

. The platform was demolished after closure and reinstated in May 2012 but this is for aesthetic purposes only, and the station remains closed.

References

;Notes ;Bibliography * * * * * * * * *

External links

* * Epping Ongar Railway's Official Website {{Central line navbox Disused London Underground stations Disused railway stations in Essex Former Great Eastern Railway stations Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1865 Railway stations in Great Britain closed in 1981 Epping Ongar Railway Former single platform tube stations

History

See also

References

External links