Keyhaven - The Evidence (Don't believe everything you read on the 'net)
I always enjoy any trip down to Hampshire or Dorset, the tinkle of yachts in harbours, the thrum of perpetual ferries, a chance to sample once more some of my favourite pubs; it lifts the spirits don't you know. I must be getting old when thoughts turn to "I could happily retire here, just there, that house with the balcony there", only another 20 years to save up for what I can't afford today!
This time whilst mooching around I was somewhat surprised to find in a bookshop one of the rare New Popular Edition OS maps for The New Forest published just after the war. Seemingly this is the only map edition which shows the line down to Keyhaven from its junction at Shirley Holm on the Lymington branch. I trust you'll forgive it being a little battered, I have a big soft spot for these maps telling a story of years gone by in colour from hand crafted originals, none of this GPS, generated on a screen to be viewed on a 3" screen to tell you how to get where you want to be stuff of the 21st century. OS maps are still world-beating in my eyes, a constantly evolving record of Britain since Napoleon was at the end of telescope on the other side of La Manche.
A rare find indeed and one that helps build a picture for the layout. Aside from the rail ferry loading point for transfering stock twixt Eastleigh works and the Isle of Wight it also shows the reason behind one of the branch's other traffic flows to the salt works. The proximity to the salt marshes of Keyhaven and Pennington Marshes supported a salt industry through the years apart from a short 300 year interlude between the 15th and 18th centuries. The salt works is now levelled as is the rail ferry site, the adjacent Keyhaven Marine Engineering company relocated to the Lymington with its well-heeled owners of yachts and Reliant Scimitars in the early 1970s. So, it's all gone now.
Armed with a copy of a page from the Railway Magazine that I remember "seeing" years ago in 1971 I went to see what, if anything, still remained at Keyhaven.
All that is now visible is the quayside wall, the River Avon's estuary continues to silt up, the end of the quay has been filled with spoil from the levelling of the site which has now become overgrown. It also forms the start of the coastal footpath that hugs the shoreline to Lymington.
The ferry crossed to Yarmouth on the Isle of Wight starting through the deeper water channels out of Keyhaven. Deeper is a somewhat subjective term as even at high tide the channel is little more than 15' deep until the shelter of the end of Hurst Castle is passed. Thereafter it's only two miles across the Solent until gaining shelter once again on the far shore once passed Sconce Point. Very few images seem to exist of the rail ferry in operation, the service was infrequent anyway but reduced over the years; crossings were preferred in calmer winds anyway but sailings were often made overnight dependent on tides to try and keep clear of the high number of pleasure boaters on that stretch of water. I caught site of a postcard at a fair that incidentally included the ferry in the distance in a late '60s shot.
The ferry unloaded at a similar facility just beyond the former Freshwater, Yarmouth and Newport station passing under the town bridge. That line never did close in 1953, not in my world.
Credits: New Popular Edition maps coutesy of http://www.npemap.org.uk/ under a Creative Commons Licence.
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