Great Victorian Railway Journeys: How Modern Britain was Built by Victorian Steam Power. Karen Farrington
of it there was naked self-interest in having his own railway station. However, Tomline maintained his motive was to provide work for hard-pressed local people.
The odds were stacked in his favour from the outset. Following a concerted campaign of purchasing he already owned most of the land needed for the route. When it applied for parliamentary approval in 1875, his company was called the Felixstowe Railway & Pier Company. Within two years (and at a cost of £14,000) the line had opened with three locomotives, 19 passenger carriages and 15 goods wagons on the line. At Felixstowe he built a beach-side station, which was not only on land he owned but was as far away as possible from the Ordnance Hotel, owned by Ipswich brewery magnate John Chevallier Cobbold – a man Tomline apparently detested.
Within two years of its opening, the running of the line was given over to the Great Eastern Railway – but it wasn’t the end of the story as far as Tomline and Felixstowe were concerned. In 1884 his company was renamed the Felixstowe Dock & Railway Company, having secured the necessary permissions for construction work that would provide moorings, warehousing and railway sidings. Although Tomline gave up his interest in the railway three years later he maintained a link with the dock, which finally opened in 1886, three years before his death. Since then it has grown beyond all expectation.
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A steam train approaching Weybourne Station on the North Norfolk Railway.
Felixstowe finally got a town-centre railway station in 1898, courtesy of the Great Eastern Railway.
Midway between Ipswich and Colchester, Suffolk gives way to Essex, although the slow pace of rural life remained the same. When the Great Eastern main line crossed the River Stour on the Essex and Suffolk border it bisected an area known today as Constable Country. It contains, of course, the vistas that inspired artist John Constable. Some of his most famous works, including The Haywain and Flatford Mill, were painted here near his boyhood home of East Bergholt in Suffolk.
Constable died in 1837, the year Victoria came to the throne. During his lifetime his paintings were more popular in France than ever they were in England. Both he and fellow artist J. M. W. Turner were lambasted by critics of the day for being safe and unadventurous in their work. But Constable insisted he would rather be a poor man in England than a rich one overseas and stayed to forge a living in the only way he knew how.
His inspiration was nature, and his pictures often betrayed the first intrusions of the Industrial Age into rural life. Although he didn’t always live there, it was Suffolk scenes he was perpetually drawn to paint. ‘I should paint my own places best,’ he wrote. ‘Painting is but another word for feeling.’ An indisputably Romantic painter, his rich use of colour arguably laid the foundations for future trends in art.
The tallest Tudor gatehouse ever built lies further down the line, marking the half-way point between Colchester and Chelmsford. Aside from its architectural glory, Layer Marney Tower has two striking claims to fame. The first is that it was owned from 1835 by Quintin Dick, an MP made notorious by his practice of buying votes. Indeed, there’s some speculation that he spent more money bribing his constituents than any other MP of the era. The son of an Irish linen merchant, Dick spent a total of 43 years as an MP, representing five different constituencies.
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Layer Marney Tower, a Tudor palace damaged by the Great English Earthquake of 1884.
© Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division
Southend Pier, c. 1890.
The tower’s second claim to fame is that it and surrounding buildings built during the reign of King Henry VIII were badly damaged in the Great English Earthquake of 1884, which had its epicentre near Colchester. Afterwards a report in The Builder magazine stated the author’s belief that the attractive monument was beyond repair: ‘The outlay needed to restore the tower to anything like a sound and habitable condition would be so large that the chance of the work ever being done appears remote indeed.’
However, the tower was repaired, thanks to the efforts of the then owners, brother and sister Alfred and Kezia Peache, who re-floored and re-roofed the gatehouse, and created the garden to the south of the tower. Layer Marney Tower was one of an estimated 1,200 buildings damaged by the earthquake, which struck on 22 April and measured 4.6 on the Richter scale. There were conflicting reports about a possible death toll, ranging from none to five. The earthquake sent waves crashing on to the coastline where numerous small boats were destroyed.
From the main east coast line it eventually became possible to forge across country by branch line to Southend. It wasn’t the earliest line built to the resort, however, nor would it be the busiest. Contractors Brassey, Betts and Peto built the first railway into Southend from London, although plans to site the station at the town’s pier head were vetoed on grounds of nuisance. It was the last stop on a line that went via Tilbury and Forest Gate to either Bishopsgate or Fenchurch Street. Primarily managed by the London, Tilbury & Southend Railway Company, the line was known locally as the LTS.
After the railway was opened there was extensive development in the town, providing houses large and small at Clifftown. Samuel Morton Peto was once again a moving force in the plans. The homes were completed in 1870 and, a decade later, a newly designed tank engine went into operation on the LTS which could haul more people at faster speeds than ever before. For the first time people could live in Southend while working in London with ease, thanks to the train. Thus Southend became an early commuter town, as well as being the closest resort to London.
But its reputation was mainly thanks to the attractions of the seaside. In 1871 the law was changed to permit Bank Holidays – days when the banks were officially shut so no trading could take place. And, thanks to its closeness to London, the train brought in hordes of trippers to Southend for days out, particularly on the popular Bank Holiday that fell on the first Monday in August – initially known as St Lubbock’s day for the Liberal political and banker Sir John Lubbock who drove the necessary Act through Parliament.
An early wooden pier in the town, dating from 1830, was now beginning to show its age. Maintenance and repair bills were high. Its original purpose had been as a landing stage for boats bringing a few tourists from London. Now there were scores more tourists and the pleasure principle was about to take precedence.
Plans drawn up for a new iron pier included an electric railway to run its length. When it opened in 1890 there was a pavilion at the shore end that hosted concerts as well as the popular pier railway to entertain the crowds. According to the National Piers Society, £10,000 of the £80,000 costs was spent on the new electric railway. Notwithstanding, there was only a single engine on the three-quarter-mile-long track. Its 13-horsepower motor was powered by the pier’s own generator. Three years later a passing loop was installed and a second three-car train went into service.
Still it wasn’t sufficient capacity for the relentless number of trippers, particularly from East London, that made their way to Southend. Although a second generator was added in 1899 to help power two more trains, it wasn’t until the Southend Corporation built its own generating station in 1902 that the four trains could be extended to cater for more passengers. The pier generators were then scrapped.
The pier was continually extended, first to provide an access point for passing steamers, and secondly to accommodate holidaymakers. The final addition in 1929 brought the length to 2,360 yards (1.34 miles or 2,158 metres), making it the longest pleasure pier in the world.
Between Southend and London the landscape was largely lush and green in Victorian times, although the capital itself was becoming a spaghetti-mess of railway lines. Along with other railway builders, Great Eastern Railways was committed to developing suburban lines around London. One of them, terminating at Ongar, led to the Royal Gunpowder Mills at Waltham Abbey. Initially a cloth