Margate railway station serves the town of

Margate Margate is a seaside town on the north coast of Kent in south-east England. The town is estimated to be 1.5 miles long, north-east of Canterbury and includes Cliftonville, Garlinge, Palm Bay and Westbrook. The town has been a significan ...

in Thanet,

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. It is down the line from . The station and all trains that serve the station are operated by

Southeastern The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each sep ...

. Trains from the station generally run to Victoria via or to via

Ramsgate Ramsgate is a seaside town in the district of Thanet in east Kent, England. It was one of the great English seaside towns of the 19th century. In 2001 it had a population of about 40,000. In 2011, according to the Census, there was a populati ...

, Canterbury West and

Ashford International Ashford International railway station is a National Rail station in Ashford, Kent, England. It connects several railway lines, including High Speed 1 and the South Eastern Main Line. Services are operated by Southeastern and Southern. The st ...

. Peak hour trains run to St Pancras via Chatham and Gravesend and to .

History

Margate BR Standard 2-6-2T geograph-2673191-by-Ben-Brooksbank

Trains first reached Ramsgate in April 1846 when the South Eastern Railway (SER) opened a line from Canterbury. It terminated at Ramsgate SER, later to be called Ramsgate Town. Later the same year the line opened across Thanet to Margate, to Margate SER, (later Margate Sands). Trains from Canterbury for Margate had to reverse at Ramsgate Town; a chord was built bypassing the station in 1864, costing £13,707. St Lawrence for Pegwell Bay railway station was opened in 1864 just before this chord but closed in 1916. The

London Chatham & Dover Railway The London, Chatham and Dover Railway (LCDR or LC&DR) was a railway company in south-eastern England created on 1 August 1859, when the East Kent Railway was given parliamentary approval to change its name. Its lines ran through London and no ...

(LCDR) reached Margate from Herne Bay on 5 October 1863. This called at Margate LC&DR (later Margate West), East Margate (later Margate East), Broadstairs and via a tunnel terminated at Ramsgate LC&DR (later Ramsgate Harbour), located near the harbour and beach. This arrangement was inherited by Southern Railway on grouping in 1923. To simplify the arrangement in 1926 a new line was opened connecting the SER line from the site of St Lawrence to the LCDR line just south of Broadstairs. The current Ramsgate station and a new station at Dumpton Park were built on this new line. The Ramsgate Harbour station, line through the tunnel, and the Ramsgate Town station and old SER line across to Margate Sands were all closed in July 1926. Margate West station was renamed Margate in 1926. Margate East closed on 4 May 1953. Until 1967 a service operated between Margate and Birkenhead Woodside via

Ashford Ashford may refer to: Places Australia *Ashford, New South Wales *Ashford, South Australia *Electoral district of Ashford, South Australia Ireland *Ashford, County Wicklow *Ashford Castle, County Galway United Kingdom *Ashford, Kent, a town **B ...

, Redhill,

Reading Reading is the process of taking in the sense or meaning of letters, symbols, etc., especially by sight or touch. For educators and researchers, reading is a multifaceted process involving such areas as word recognition, orthography (spell ...

Oxford Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

, Birmingham Snow Hill and

Shrewsbury Shrewsbury ( , also ) is a market town, civil parish, and the county town of Shropshire, England, on the River Severn, north-west of London; at the 2021 census, it had a population of 76,782. The town's name can be pronounced as either 'Sh ...

. The stock was provided on alternate days by successors to the Southern Railway and the

Great Western Railway The Great Western Railway (GWR) was a British railway company that linked London with the southwest, west and West Midlands of England and most of Wales. It was founded in 1833, received its enabling Act of Parliament on 31 August 1835 and ran ...

, being the Southern Region and the Western Region under

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 ra ...

. At Ashford a portion from

Sandwich A sandwich is a food typically consisting of vegetables, sliced cheese or meat, placed on or between slices of bread, or more generally any dish wherein bread serves as a container or wrapper for another food type. The sandwich began as a po ...

Deal A deal, or deals may refer to: Places United States * Deal, New Jersey, a borough * Deal, Pennsylvania, an unincorporated community * Deal Lake, New Jersey Elsewhere * Deal Island (Tasmania), Australia * Deal, Kent, a town in England * Deal, a ...

and

Dover Dover () is a town and major ferry port in Kent, South East England. It faces France across the Strait of Dover, the narrowest part of the English Channel at from Cap Gris Nez in France. It lies south-east of Canterbury and east of Maids ...

was attached/detached, likewise a

Brighton Brighton () is a seaside resort and one of the two main areas of the City of Brighton and Hove in the county of East Sussex, England. It is located south of London. Archaeological evidence of settlement in the area dates back to the Bronze A ...

portion at Redhill.

Architecture

The station was rebuilt in 1926 by the SR's chief assistant architect,

Edwin Maxwell Fry Edwin Maxwell Fry, CBE, RA, FRIBA, F RTPI, known as Maxwell Fry (2 August 1899 – 3 September 1987), was an English modernist architect, writer and painter. Originally trained in the neo-classical style of architecture, Fry grew to favour the ...

. The building is constructed in a monumental classical style from brown brick with a stone dressing and a hipped tiled roof. The booking hall was built in a similar manner, in a distinctive ellipse shape with pendant lighting. It was

Grade II listed In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern I ...

in 1987.

Cultural references

The station was featured in ''

Only Fools and Horses ''Only Fools and Horses....'' is a British television sitcom created and written by John Sullivan (writer), John Sullivan. Seven series were originally broadcast on BBC One in the United Kingdom from 1981 to 1991, with sixteen sporadic Christmas ...

'', in the 1989 episode ''

The Jolly Boys' Outing "The Jolly Boys' Outing" is the eighth Christmas special episode of the BBC sitcom ''Only Fools and Horses'', first screened on 25 December 1989. Despite being aired as a Christmas special, it is set on an August bank holiday weekend, and sees De ...

''. Del Boy and Rodney discover the station is closed due to a strike, after being stuck in Margate following their coach blowing up.

Services

Margate station geograph-3782224-by-Ben-Brooksbank

All services at Margate are operated by

using and

EMUs Emus may refer to: * Emu The emu () (''Dromaius novaehollandiae'') is the second-tallest living bird after its ratite relative the ostrich. It is endemic to Australia where it is the largest native bird and the only extant member of the ...

. The typical off-peak service in trains per hour is: * 1 tph to London St Pancras International via and * 1 tph to London St Pancras International via and * 1 tph to via Chatham * 2 tph to Additional services including trains to and from and

London Cannon Street Cannon Street station, also known as London Cannon Street, is a central London railway terminus and connected London Underground station in Travelcard zone 1 located on Cannon Street in the City of London and managed by Network Rail. It is o ...

call at the station in the peak hours.

References

Citations Sources * *

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Margate Railway Station Margate Railway stations in Kent DfT Category D stations Former London, Chatham and Dover Railway stations Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1863 Railway stations served by Southeastern Grade II listed railway stations Grade II listed buildings in Kent Art Deco architecture in England Art Deco railway stations