Stewartby railway station is a station on the

London Northwestern Railway West Midlands Trains (WMT) is a train operating company in the United Kingdom. It operates passenger trains on the West Midlands franchise between London and the English Midlands under two trade names: West Midlands Railway (WMR) (within the ...

, which serves the

Bedfordshire Bedfordshire (; abbreviated Beds) is a ceremonial county in the East of England. The county has been administered by three unitary authorities, Borough of Bedford, Central Bedfordshire and Borough of Luton, since Bedfordshire County Council wa ...

village of

Stewartby Stewartby is a model village and civil parish in Bedfordshire, originally built for the workers of the London Brick Company. The village was designed and built to the plans of the company's architect Mr F W Walker, laid out on ‘Garden City� ...

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 ...

. It is the nearest station to the Marston Vale Millennium Country Park.

Services

Stewartby station, in common with others on the Marston Vale Line, is covered by the Marston Vale

Community Rail Community rail in Britain is the support of railway lines and stations by local organisations, usually through community rail partnerships (CRPs) comprising railway operators, local councils, and other community organisations, and rail user group ...

Partnership, which aims to increase use of the line by involving local people. An hourly service runs in each direction Monday to Saturday, but no trains call on Sundays.

History

When first opened in 1905 by the

London and North Western Railway The London and North Western Railway (LNWR, L&NWR) was a British railway company between 1846 and 1922. In the late 19th century, the L&NWR was the largest joint stock company in the United Kingdom. In 1923, it became a constituent of the Lo ...

, the station was a halt serving the small village of

Wootton Pillinge Wootton is an English place name meaning ''place by the wood''. The standard pronunciation rhymes the first syllable with ''foot''. Places ;Places in England called Wootton *Wootton, Bedfordshire *Wootton Fitzpaine, Dorset *Wootton, New Forest, ham ...

, a largely rural community that, in 1897, had become the site of B.J.H. Forder's

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 plant was served by sidings close to and alongside the halt which were controlled by a

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'' ...

; the halt was simply constructed with a platform at ground level constructed out of

sleepers ''Sleepers'' is a 1996 American legal crime drama film written, produced, and directed by Barry Levinson, and based on Lorenzo Carcaterra's 1995 book of the same name. The film stars Kevin Bacon, Jason Patric, Brad Pitt, Robert De Niro, Dustin Ho ...

. By 1910, the Wootton Pillinge Brick Company was selling 48 million bricks per year and in 1923, it merged with the

London Brick Company The London Brick Company, owned by Forterra plc, is a leading British manufacturer of bricks. History The London Brick Company owes its origins to John Cathles Hill, a developer-architect who built houses in London and Peterborough. In 1889, H ...

(LBC). The brickworks developed virtually across the railway line and as the wagon capacity of the old sidings was exceeded, they became an extension for a larger group of sidings developing at Wootton Broadmead. The Wootton Pillinge signal box was closed and a new box was opened called "Forder's Sidings" which controlled heavy movements from the works. In 1926 the LBC began to build a "garden village" for its employees at Wootton Pillinge; the village was to be named "Stewartby" after Sir Halley Stewart, the former

Liberal Liberal or liberalism may refer to: Politics * a supporter of liberalism ** Liberalism by country * an adherent of a Liberal Party * Liberalism (international relations) * Sexually liberal feminism * Social liberalism Arts, entertainment and m ...

Parliamentary candidate for

Peterborough Peterborough () is a cathedral city in Cambridgeshire, east of England. It is the largest part of the City of Peterborough unitary authority district (which covers a larger area than Peterborough itself). It was part of Northamptonshire until ...

and first chairman of the Wootton Pillinge Brick Company. Following the building of the village, the

London, Midland and Scottish Railway The London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMSIt has been argued that the initials LMSR should be used to be consistent with LNER, GWR and SR. The London, Midland and Scottish Railway's corporate image used LMS, and this is what is generally u ...

renamed the station (which ceased to be a halt in 1928) to Stewartby. The Stewartby brickworks was connected to the Marston Vale Line ''via'' a narrow gauge railway operating on overhead electrification. This is believed to have been installed in the 1930s and lasted until 1960. After reaching a peak production level of 738 million bricks in 1973, demand for bricks declined and the LBC (trading as Easidispose) signed an agreement the following year to re-use its empty clay pits as

landfill A landfill site, also known as a tip, dump, rubbish dump, garbage dump, or dumping ground, is a site for the disposal of waste materials. Landfill is the oldest and most common form of waste disposal, although the systematic burial of the waste ...

transported from

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

. One or two daily container trains began transporting 1,000 tons of waste from

Hendon Hendon is an urban area in the Borough of Barnet, North-West London northwest of Charing Cross. Hendon was an ancient manor and parish in the county of Middlesex and a former borough, the Municipal Borough of Hendon; it has been part of Great ...

to handling facilities at Stewartby.

References

Sources

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External links

{{Railway stations in Bedfordshire Railway stations in Bedfordshire DfT Category F2 stations Former London and North Western Railway stations Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1905 Railway stations in Great Britain closed in 1917 Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1919 Railway stations served by West Midlands Trains East West Rail