Smeeth is a disused railway station on the

South Eastern Main Line The South Eastern Main Line is a major long-distance railway route in South East England, UK, one of the three main routes crossing the county of Kent, going via Sevenoaks, Tonbridge, Ashford and Folkestone to Dover. The other routes are the C ...

which served the village of

Smeeth Smeeth is a mostly agricultural land use village and civil parish, centred east of Ashford in the Ashford Borough of Kent, England. Geography Smeeth is a small village in population near Mersham Hatch Park on the A20 road from Ashford to Fol ...

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. The station opened in 1852 and closed in 1954.

History

Smeeth, a scattered village community of a few hundred persons in the early 1840s, was initially ignored by the South Eastern Railway (SER) when it constructed its mainline through the area to reach

Folkestone Folkestone ( ) is a port town on the English Channel, in Kent, south-east England. The town lies on the southern edge of the North Downs at a valley between two cliffs. It was an important harbour and shipping port for most of the 19th and 20t ...

. Situated from Ashford, the small village was primarily a farming community producing

wheat Wheat is a grass widely cultivated for its seed, a cereal grain that is a worldwide staple food. The many species of wheat together make up the genus ''Triticum'' ; the most widely grown is common wheat (''T. aestivum''). The archaeologi ...

barley Barley (''Hordeum vulgare''), a member of the grass family, is a major cereal grain grown in temperate climates globally. It was one of the first cultivated grains, particularly in Eurasia as early as 10,000 years ago. Globally 70% of barley pr ...

oats The oat (''Avena sativa''), sometimes called the common oat, is a species of cereal grain grown for its seed, which is known by the same name (usually in the plural, unlike other cereals and pseudocereals). While oats are suitable for human con ...

beans A bean is the seed of several plants in the family Fabaceae, which are used as vegetables for human or animal food. They can be cooked in many different ways, including boiling, frying, and baking, and are used in many traditional dishes th ...

and

peas The pea is most commonly the small spherical seed or the seed-pod of the flowering plant species ''Pisum sativum''. Each pod contains several peas, which can be green or yellow. Botanically, pea pods are fruit, since they contain seeds and d ...

; the grain was processed at Evegate Mill on the River Stour to the south of the railway line, which was the most substantial structure in the area. In 1850, six years after opening the South Eastern Main Line, a deputation of local tradesmen pressed the SER to open a station in the village, arguing that the potential goods traffic that could be generated would outweigh the lack of passenger receipts. Although there was little to suggest that Smeeth could justify and support a railway station, the SER agreed to the venture. A site was chosen to the south of the village at a point where the

Bonnington Bonnington is a dispersed village and civil parish on the northern edge of the Romney Marsh in Ashford District of Kent, England. The village is located to the south of the town of Ashford on the B2067 ( Hamstreet to Hythe road). Bonnington h ...

to Smeeth road (now the B2069) crossed the railway line. The land was owned by the Knatchbull-Hugessen family, Sir Edward Knatchbull-Hugessen being the local

Member of Parliament A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house members of ...

and, in later years, a director of the SER. Rather than the usual wooden,

clapboard Clapboard (), also called bevel siding, lap siding, and weatherboard, with regional variation in the definition of these terms, is wooden siding of a building in the form of horizontal boards, often overlapping. ''Clapboard'' in modern Americ ...

structures favoured in the construction of SER stations, Smeeth's main station building was instead a substantial multi-gabled brick building. Other common SER features were to be found at this station, including two staggered platforms and a weather-boarded

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'' ...

situated on the upside together with the main station building. The down platform had the minimum of facilities: only a basic wooden waiting shelter and paraffin lamps on "barley-sugar" columns. In 1873, the station facilities were enlarged and the goods yard extended involving the laying of an extra siding, indicating a respectable level of goods traffic. Timetabling of services generally saw eight up and down trains call at Smeeth on weekdays: the first service (up) at 7.25 am, and the last service (down) at 9.25 pm. Passenger traffic began to drop following the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

as bus services became more popular; the

East Kent Road Car Company The East Kent Road Car Company Ltd was a bus company formed in 1916 and based in Canterbury, Kent. The company operated bus and coach services in Kent. In 1993 it was one of the first companies to be acquired by the Stagecoach Group, which eve ...

ran buses that passed close to Smeeth on their way between Ashford and

, drawing off much of the railway's custom.

Nationalisation Nationalization (nationalisation in British English) is the process of transforming privately-owned assets into public assets by bringing them under the public ownership of a national government or state. Nationalization usually refers to pri ...

in 1947 saw the

Southern Region of British Railways The Southern Region was a region of British Railways from 1948 until 1992 when railways were re-privatised. The region ceased to be an operating unit in its own right in the 1980s. The region covered south London, southern England and the sout ...

(BR) take over responsibility for the station, and it began to implement a new policy of centering goods traffic at larger railhead depots, thereby sounding the death knell for many wayside stations across the country whose income was largely down to goods traffic. In 1953, BR proposed the closure of Smeeth Station, arguing that it would save nearly £10,000 in wages and other expenses linked with the renewal of the two platforms; the station, it said, brought in £10,322 in goods receipts and only £143 would be lost from withdrawing passenger services. The local Member of Parliament,

Bill Deedes William Francis Deedes, Baron Deedes, (1 June 1913 – 17 August 2007) was a British Conservative Party (UK), Conservative politician, army officer and journalist. He was the first person in Britain to have been both a member of the Cabinet and ...

, encouraged villagers to fight the closure, but the local newspaper noted that most preferred to travel by bus or motor car. The station's last passenger train, therefore, departed at 9.50 pm on Sunday 3 January 1954, leaving goods traffic to last for ten more years before Smeeth closed entirely. The goods yard was let for commercial use after its closure on 18 April 1964, and the buildings were later demolished to leave no trace that a station had ever existed on the site.

References

Bibliography

* * * {{coord, 51.1077, 0.9535, type:railwaystation_region:GB, display=title Disused railway stations in Kent Former South Eastern Railway (UK) stations Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1852 Railway stations in Great Britain closed in 1954 1852 establishments in England 1954 disestablishments in England