Wookey railway station was a station on the Bristol and Exeter Railway's Cheddar Valley line in

Somerset ( en, All The People of Somerset) , locator_map = , coordinates = , region = South West England , established_date = Ancient , established_by = , preceded_by = , origin = , lord_lieutenant_office =Lord Lieutenant of Somerset , lord_ ...

, England. The site is a 0.04

hectare The hectare (; SI symbol: ha) is a non-SI metric unit of area equal to a square with 100- metre sides (1 hm2), or 10,000 m2, and is primarily used in the measurement of land. There are 100 hectares in one square kilometre. An acre is ...

geological Site of Special Scientific Interest A Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) in Great Britain or an Area of Special Scientific Interest (ASSI) in the Isle of Man and Northern Ireland is a conservation designation denoting a protected area in the United Kingdom and Isle o ...

between Wells and Wookey Hole

History

The station opened on 1 August 1871 about a year after the extension of the broad gauge line from Cheddar to Wells had been built. The line was converted to standard gauge in the mid-1870s and then linked up to the

East Somerset Railway The East Somerset Railway is a heritage railway in Somerset, running between Cranmore and Mendip Vale. Prior to the Beeching Axe, the railway was once part of the former Cheddar Valley line that ran from Witham to Yatton, meeting the Somer ...

to provide through services from

Yatton Yatton is a village and civil parish within the unitary authority of North Somerset, which falls within the ceremonial county of Somerset, England. It is located south-west of Bristol. Its population in 2011 was 7,552. The parish includes Clav ...

Witham Witham () is a town in the county of Essex in the East of England, with a population ( 2011 census) of 25,353. It is part of the District of Braintree and is twinned with the town of Waldbröl, Germany. Witham stands between the city of Che ...

in 1878. All the railways involved were absorbed into the Great Western Railway in the 1870s. The station was host to a GWR camp coach from 1935 to 1939. The Yatton to Witham line closed to passengers in 1963; Wookey station closed on 9 September 1963, though goods traffic continued to the paper mills at Wookey until 1965. Wookey station had a small wooden building, unlike some of the other stations on the line which had impressive stone buildings. The site was cleared after closure.

Site of Special Scientific Interest

It is listed in the

Geological Conservation Review The Geological Conservation Review (GCR) is produced by the UK's Joint Nature Conservation Committee and is designed to identify those sites of national and international importance needed to show all the key scientific elements of the geological ...

because of the exposure of a thick sequence of

Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was finally confirmed in ...

-aged cryoturbated gravels which exhibit scour-and-fill structures in their lower part. A small, silty channel-infilling has yielded an assemblage of

palynomorph Palynology is the "study of dust" (from grc-gre, παλύνω, palynō, "strew, sprinkle" and ''-logy'') or of "particles that are strewn". A classic palynologist analyses particulate samples collected from the air, from water, or from deposit ...

spores dating from the last ( Devensian) glacial period.English Nature citation sheet for the site
(accessed 9 August 2006)

References

* * * {{SSSIs Somerset geological

Wookey Wookey is a village and civil parish west of Wells, on the River Axe in the Mendip district of Somerset, England. The parish includes the village of Henton and the nearby hamlets of Yarley and Bleadney where the River Axe travels the length ...

Former Great Western Railway stations Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1871 Railway stations in Great Britain closed in 1963 Sites of Special Scientific Interest in Somerset Sites of Special Scientific Interest notified in 1997 Geology of Somerset Railway cuttings in the United Kingdom

History

Site of Special Scientific Interest

See also

References