Downton was a railway station serving Downton, a village in

Wiltshire Wiltshire (; abbreviated Wilts) is a historic and ceremonial county in South West England with an area of . It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset to the southwest, Somerset to the west, Hampshire to the southeast, Gloucestershire ...

. The village contained a large tanning mill on the River Avon, which has now closed, and has been redeveloped as residential property. The station was one of many casualties of the mass closure of British railway lines in the 1960s and 1970s; the last service was on 2 May 1964. It was served by the

Salisbury and Dorset Junction Railway The Salisbury and Dorset Junction Railway was a railway company, that built a line from a junction near Salisbury to another near West Moors on the Ringwood to Wimborne line. It ran through the counties of Wiltshire, Hampshire and Dorset in Eng ...

, a line running north–south, along the River Avon just to the West of the

New Forest The New Forest is one of the largest remaining tracts of unenclosed pasture land, heathland and forest in Southern England, covering southwest Hampshire and southeast Wiltshire. It was proclaimed a royal forest by William the Conqueror, featu ...

, connecting

Salisbury Salisbury ( ) is a cathedral city in Wiltshire, England with a population of 41,820, at the confluence of the rivers Avon, Nadder and Bourne. The city is approximately from Southampton and from Bath. Salisbury is in the southeast of Wil ...

to the North and

Poole Poole () is a large coastal town and seaport in Dorset, on the south coast of England. The town is east of Dorchester and adjoins Bournemouth to the east. Since 1 April 2019, the local authority is Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Counc ...

to the South, meeting the

Southampton and Dorchester Railway The Southampton and Dorchester Railway was an English railway company formed to join Southampton in Hampshire with Dorchester, Dorset, Dorchester in Dorset, with hopes of forming part of a route from London to Exeter. It received Parliamentary au ...

West Moors West Moors is a village in Dorset, England, on the northern fringe of the Poole-Bournemouth conurbation, just outside the larger settlements of Ferndown and Verwood. The parish of West Moors had an estimated population of 7,400 in 2004, increasi ...

. Today, the site of the station is a residential estate.

External links

Downton Station at Subterranea Britannica

External links

Further reading