North Leigh Station, with Goods Yard and Narrow Gauge System Beyond

 

When I first decided to attribute the location of my small layout to North Leigh in Oxfordshire, the only basis I had was a map dated 1849, which shows a branch line from the OW&WR main line running south from near Stonesfield to Witney. Of course, this line was never built and Witney was eventually served by the now closed Fairford Branch described at http://www.fairfordbranch.co.uk/ , from which website the following map was taken, with permission:

 

1849 Map showing planned Witney Branch

 

For more background information about my layout, see: https://www.rmweb.co.uk/blogs/entry/15925-read-me-first/

 

My ‘fiction’ about the Wilcote family turned out to have more truth than I realised, when I discovered the beautiful ‘Wilcote’ chapel in St Mary’s church at North Leigh, founded in 1438, containing the effigies of Sir William and Lady Wilcote.  An extensive essay about the chapel by Kate Heard can be downloaded from https://docs-eu.livesiteadmin.com/9bfdcf97-cfb1-46b2-a0a3-c577f41b8f38/death-and-representation-in-the-fifteenth-century.pdf

 

Wilcote Chapel, St.Mary’s North Leigh, photographed in 2016

 

The idea of a narrow gauge railway in the area still seemed to be entirely fanciful, since I knew of nothing similar in the Cotswolds region but then, ‘chance’ struck again, following a recent visit to an old riverside pub near Lechlade!  An information board there described some of the history of the area, drawing attention to the extensive trade along the River Thames, with many wharves for loading local produce destined for London.

 

Following up on this information, I looked at the 19th-century OS 25” maps of the area, which, to my surprise, showed an extensive series of tramways, leading from farms around Buscot to a Distillery and other industrial buildings situated by the river.

 

OS Map Buscot (National Library of Scotland – Creative Commons Licence)

 

The estate of Buscot Park is now managed by the National Trust and there is an article by John R. Gray on the web, entitled ‘An Industrialised Agricultural Estate in Berkshire’  From this article, I learned that, in 1859, Robert Tertius Campbell, recently returned from Australia, acquired the semi-derelict Buscot Park.  The estate totalled 3,500 acres and included the parishes of Buscot and the depopulated village of Eaton Hastings.  At Buscot, he devised a scheme to make sugar and to distil spirit alcohol from sugar beet.  The distillery, built at a reputed cost of £100,000 on the island adjacent to Buscot lock, was opened in 1869.

 

To collect the 10,000 to 12,000 tons of sugar beet per year from the farms, Campbell built a narrow-gauge railway (2’ 8” gauge), with over 6 miles of track, round the estate.  Three 0-4-0 tank engines were supplied by Appleby Brothers of Southwark, and named after Campbell's daughters, Edith, Emily and Alice.  I found a photograph of ‘Edith’ in the book ‘British Steam Locomotive Builders’ by J.W. Lowe.

 

‘Edith’, supplied by Appleby Bros., Southwark

 

I now believe that this tramway system had several similarities to the system I devised around North Leigh, where it would have served to collect stone from the many quarries in the area and timber from the sawmills associated with the nearby Wychwood Forest. These aims seem to me at least as reasonable as the enterprise at Buscot!   Sadly, the bold venture at Buscot failed after only 10 years and few traces remain on the ground today.

 

Perhaps there were places not too dissimilar to those on my own layout, as captured by the brush of Amy Wilcote.

Narrow Gauge Railway serving North Leigh Farms

Sawmill near North Leigh

 

Whereas the system at Buscot linked the farms to wharves on the River Thames, my imagined narrow-gauge system at North Leigh led to interchange sidings in the Goods Yard behind North Leigh Station, from where building stone from the quarries and timber from the sawmill could be transported to Oxford and other local towns.

 

Transfer Sidings at North Leigh Goods Yard

 

On the Buscot tramway system, the south-east terminus of the railway was at Oldfield Farm, where Campbell built a water-powered corn mill. Similarly, there was a watermill near North Leigh, which was a favourite place for Amy Wilcote to set up her easel. Sometimes, as I run my layout late in the evening, I imagine I can see her there:

 

Water Mill near North Leigh

 

At present, according to the message on this website “Image restoration from pre-May 2021 continues and may take an indefinite period of time.” The illustrations in this post will have to make do for all those currently missing from this blog.

 

Mike