Rowfant was a railway station on the

Three Bridges to Tunbridge Wells Central Line 3 is a number, numeral, and glyph. 3, three, or III may also refer to: * AD 3, the third year of the AD era * 3 BC, the third year before the AD era * March, the third month Books * ''Three of Them'' (Russian: ', literally, "three"), a 1901 n ...

in the parish of

Worth, West Sussex Worth is either a civil parish in the Mid Sussex District of West Sussex, or a distinct but historically related village in Crawley. Civil parish Worth is a civil parish in the Mid Sussex District of West Sussex, a county in southeast England. I ...

. The line closed in 1967, a casualty of the

Beeching Axe The Beeching cuts (also Beeching Axe) was a plan to increase the efficiency of the nationalised railway system in Great Britain. The plan was outlined in two reports: ''The Reshaping of British Railways'' (1963) and ''The Development of the ...

. The route of the railway line cut a path through the estate of

Curtis Miranda Lampson Sir Curtis Miranda Lampson, 1st Baronet (21 September 1806 – 12 March 1885) was an Anglo-American fur merchant, best remembered for his promotion of the transatlantic telegraph cable. Life Born New Haven, Vermont, to American Revolutiona ...

, a wealthy American fur trader and vice-chairman of the

Atlantic Telegraph Company The Atlantic Telegraph Company was a company formed on 6 November 1856 to undertake and exploit a commercial telegraph cable across the Atlantic ocean, the first such telecommunications link. History Cyrus Field, American businessman and finan ...

, who agreed to sell his land cheaply to 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) on condition that a station be provided, together with the right to stop trains on request. Apart from Lampson's Rowfant House the only other nearby residence was Worth Hall owned by John Nix, an LBSCR director. At Lampson's request a shelter was provided for his coachmen. Before and during World War Two an Air Force Reserve Storage Depot, was constructed adjacent to the station and railway line.Tim Whittle: Fuelling the Wars - PLUTO and the Secret Pipeline Network 1936 to 2015 published 2017 p219.

Train services

Rowfant, initially the only intermediate station between

Three Bridges Three Bridges may refer to: England *Three Bridges, West Sussex, a neighbourhood within the town of Crawley **Three Bridges F.C., an association football team **Three Bridges railway station **Three Bridges depot, a rail depot * Three Bridges, Linc ...

and

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 ...

, saw an initial service of six passenger trains per day, with two on Sundays. By 1859 this had increased to nine services with one early morning goods train, and four Sunday services. The opening of another intermediate station in 1860, Grange Road, saw passenger trains cut to six on weekdays. An additional siding and

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were provided in 1878, the siding serving a nearby

brickworks A brickworks, also known as a brick factory, is a factory for the manufacturing of bricks, from clay or shale. Usually a brickworks is located on a clay bedrock (the most common material from which bricks are made), often with a quarry for cl ...

. The station was further enlarged in 1900-1901 when it became a crossing station with a new 500 ft. Up platform and footbridge. In 1906 the introduction of new motor carriages led to an increase in weekday services.

Closure

Nevertheless, Rowfant saw very little passenger traffic and jointly held with Kingscote the record for the least revenue for passenger journeys on the LBSCR. Although it saw a brief revival in terms of freight traffic when

Gatwick Airport Gatwick Airport (), also known as London Gatwick , is a major international airport near Crawley, West Sussex, England, south of Central London. In 2021, Gatwick was the third-busiest airport by total passenger traffic in the UK, after H ...

opened in the late 1950s and jet fuel was stored in the Petroleum Storage Depot, its days were numbered and it closed with the rest of the line in January 1967 under the programme of closures put forward by local resident and

British Rail 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 ...

Chairman,

Richard Beeching Richard Beeching, Baron Beeching (21 April 1913 – 23 March 1985), commonly known as Dr Beeching, was a physicist and engineer who for a short but very notable time was chairman of British Railways. He became a household name in Britain in the e ...

The site today

Today the majority of the station survives, with the station site and goods yard occupied by a company producing road-building materials, Colas Limited. The station building, stationmaster's house and part of the Down platform survive. The

Worth Way The Worth Way is a footpath and bridleway linking the West Sussex towns of Crawley and East Grinstead via the village of Crawley Down. Mostly following the trackbed of a disused railway the path is an important wildlife corridor. It is part of ...

, a public footpath following the line of the railway, runs alongside the north face of the station building which is currently disused with its windows and doorways bricked up.

Former fuel storage depot

Originally constructed by Shell-Mex & BP as an Air Force Reserve Depot during the war in two phases in 1938–9 and 1943–4 with two sites. Three 4,000 ton, ten 900 ton, one 450 ton white oil tanks; two 250 ton and two 500 ton lube oil tanks. Semi-buried fuel and lube oil tanks were built on both sides of the East Grinstead/Rowfant Railway Station road. there were road loading facilities for white and lube oils and a rail gantry about 300 metres east of the depot on sidings at the railway station. The site was handed over by the Air Ministry to the Ministry of Power in 1959. It was declared surplus in 1982, demolished in 1991 and sold in 1999.

References

External links