Didcot Newbury & Southampton line

[phil_sutters]

This is, it would seem, the only photo Dad took on this line. At the time he had very little spare cash for photography, but he still liked to get out and about with his spotting notebook, details from which were later turned into the neat log books. These pages record this trip which actually started on the previous page at Oxford.

[lmsforever]

On 17/10/2022 at 02:01, daveyb said:

The WW2 depot mentioned is still a barracks and was until recently the home of Royal Engineers geographic and topographic services (14 Geo Regt RE) but is now home to 77Brigade HQ. It was redeveloped in the 70s after one of the many 1960s post National Service plans. 

 

If you think transport policy has been short sighted, ill-conceived, short-lived and without any focus, have a look at Defence planning!

 

Hermitage was one of the possible relocation points for Vauxhall Barracks in Didcot, which is a remnant of Central Ordnance Depot Didcot (closed in 1963 to build the power station recently demolished). But in one of the reviews of the last 10 years, 77 Bde were new and shiny and Didcot was completely forgotten... Literally forgotten! We called the chaps at Army HQ when they released the re-basing plan in 2014/5 to be told we didn't exist and had been closed years ago... Vauxhall Barracks is still there!

I used to deliver fish to the canteen and had to park over a pit that was light up and the van checked and on I would go to the canteen ,this was in the eigthies and nineties.The bomb squad was also based there I also went to the maps dept there.

[KeithMacdonald]

As a slight detour from Disused Railways, here's a Never-Used Railway. It was a proposed branch from Compton to East Ilsley.

 

 

Why East Ilsley? Because that small village was a junction (or meeting place) of several ancient British droving routes, and had held a large Sheep Fair since the 1600s. Some routes came from as far north as Scotland. One route (The Ridgeway, Lyme Regis in Devon to the East Coast in Norfolk) is itself know to be at least 5,000 years old.

 

Quote

 

a quarter of a million sheep changed hands annually there in the first half of the 19th Century ... According to Mr George Woodage, who remembers helping his father at the sales, two Scottish drovers used to start from (the Lowlands?) with 50 sheep; by the time they had reached East Ilsley, they had between two and three thousand. ... The markets were held twice monthly, from April to October from 1620 till 1934 ... The fairs were not interrupted by the advent of the railways: special trains arrived, 30-40 wagons long, at Compton, and the beasts were walked less than 2 miles to Ilsley.  It was road transport that killed the fair, in 1934.

http://www.localdroveroads.co.uk/east-ilsley-sheep-fair/

 

 

Wool from these sheep would have kept weavers busy in Newbury and Winchester, perhaps Witney as well.