Compton railway station was a station on the

Didcot, Newbury and Southampton Railway The Didcot, Newbury and Southampton Railway (DN&SR) was a cross-country railway running north–south between Didcot, Newbury and Winchester. Its promoters intended an independent route to Southampton and envisaged heavy traffic from the Midl ...

in England. Compton was the largest station between

Newbury, Berkshire Newbury is a market town in the county of Berkshire, England, and is home to the administrative headquarters of West Berkshire Council. The town centre around its large market square retains a rare medieval Cloth Hall, an adjoining half timbere ...

and

Didcot Didcot ( ) is a railway town and civil parish in the ceremonial county of Oxfordshire and the historic county of Berkshire. Didcot is south of Oxford, east of Wantage and north west of Reading. The town is noted for its railway heritage, Di ...

Oxfordshire Oxfordshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the north west of South East England. It is a mainly rural county, with its largest settlement being the city of Oxford. The county is a centre of research and development, primarily ...

, serving the villages of

Compton Compton may refer to: Places Canada * Compton (electoral district), a former Quebec federal electoral district * Compton (provincial electoral district), a former Quebec provincial electoral district now part of Mégantic-Compton * Compton, Que ...

East Ilsley East Ilsley is a village and civil parish in the Berkshire Downs in West Berkshire, north of Newbury. The village is centred immediately east of the A34 dual carriageway which passes the length of the village from north to south. It has the vast ...

and

Aldworth Aldworth is a village and mainly farmland Civil parishes in England, civil parish in the England, English county of Berkshire, near the boundary with Oxfordshire. Orthography and slight change of name Aldworth was recorded in the Domesday Boo ...

. The station closed in 1962.

Facilities

The station consisted of two platforms with the ticket offices and station buildings located on the Northbound platform. This was the only station with the exceptions of and Newbury to have a footbridge linking the platforms, most likely to preserve the use of a footpath over which a Public Right of Way existed and to eliminate the danger of users having to cross the line by other means. To the north of the station was a

goods shed A goods shed is a railway building designed for storing goods before or after carriage in a train. A typical goods shed will have a track running through it to allow goods wagons to be unloaded under cover, although sometimes they were built ...

plus cattle pens and three sidings which supported a busy coal trade and the loading of the products of the foundry. Evidence of the routes of these sidings can still be traced where continued use of weedkillers on the trackbed still inhibits the growth of invasive plants. A signal box was located at the north end of the southbound platform and there is an unusual single-truck bay set into the northbound platform to facilitate the loading of a horse-box to the rear of a Didcot-bound train. There is still the remains of a service road which ran from the station yard down alongside the embankment to meet the village road passing under the nearby bridge; the lower end of which has now been absorbed into the grounds of Compton Primary School. The station received relatively large volumes of goods traffic for the area with Baker's Foundry being located in the nearby village.

Proposed East Ilsley branch

A link line to nearby

was planned but never built, although certain parts of the proposed route were levelled and ballasted for reasons as yet unknown. There was a facility at Compton for incorporating the junction and for the stabling of a small locomotive to operate the route.

The site today

The station house, booking hall and some outbuildings (lamp and oil stores and a porter's shed) and the nearby substantial brick road overbridge are still in existence. A public footpath allows access to the platform side revealing the complete platforms but with the trackbed filled in to the same level and laid as a lawn. An enamel "Platform tickets to be given up on leaving platform" sign, although it is not known if this is original. The large, well-built and relatively intact goods shed was demolished in 2001 to make way for a small business area.Karau, P., Parsons, M. and Robertson, K. (1984) ''An illustrated history of the Didcot, Newbury and Southampton Railway'', Wild Swan Publications,

Routes

References

{{coord, 51.5148, N, 1.2460, W, type:railwaystation_region:GB, display=title Disused railway stations in Berkshire Former Great Western Railway stations Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1882 Railway stations in Great Britain closed in 1942 Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1943 Railway stations in Great Britain closed in 1962