Bath Green Park railway station
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Green Park railway station is a former railway station in Bath, Somerset.
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[edit] Architecture and opening
Green Park was named after the nearby pleasure gardens on the River Avon, although it was originally called Queen Square Station. The station was built in an elegant style which blends well with the Georgian buildings around it and includes a vaulted glass roof. It opened as a railway station in 1869 for Midland Railway services from Bristol and from the North and the Midlands via Mangotsfield.
In 1874, the Bath extension of the Somerset and Dorset Railway was completed. The extension bankrupted the S&D, which was taken under the joint ownership of the Midland and the London and South Western Railway in 1875, being renamed as the Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway. The S&DJR ran through services from Bath to Bournemouth, and trains from the North and the Midlands also ran through, though because of the configuration of the station as a terminus, they exited from Green Park on the same tracks by which they entered.
The station had four running tracks but only two platforms. The longer platform on the south side was used for express trains; the shorter northern side platform was used for smaller stopping trains, both on the S&DJR and on the Midland line to the north-west. The middle two tracks were used for running the locomotives around to take the trains out of the station, though in later years carriages were sometimes left on these tracks.
The station is on the north bank of the river Avon, and trains crossed a bridge immediately outside it. The locomotive shed was about half a mile from the station to the north side of the main tracks. The goods yard was on the opposite side of the tracks from this. The junction where the S&DJR forked left away from the Midland line was about one mile to the west of the station, and the steep climb to Combe Down Tunnel at an average gradient of 1 in 50 began from there.
[edit] Subsequent history
Queen Square station was operated by the Midland Railway. At the grouping it passed to the London Midland and Scottish Railway. For almost all of its life, it was usually referred to as Bath Queen Square station, after the prestigious square about a quarter of a mile away. It became Bath Green Park under British Railways after nationalisation in 1948, and still bears that name today.
Parts of the distinctive glass roof were damaged during bombing raids in April 1942.
[edit] Closure
The last passenger train ran in 1966 and the last goods train in 1971. The station was closed following the Beeching Report. In the 1980s the trackways leading into the station approach were redeveloped as a major supermarket and it was officially reopened in December 1982.
[edit] Current uses
Green Park continues to be home to a Sainsburys supermarket and a number of other shops and retail outlets. The former booking hall is now Green Park Brasserie. The old station building is used as a market hall, with some permanent stalls and boutiques and a farmers' market every Saturday. It occasionally acts as a venue for music and arts events and other performances and displays.
It is also the headquarters of the Envolve organisation which runs Green Park and provides information about environmental issues and sustainable development.
[edit] Other stations in Bath
The other stations in Bath were:
- Bath Spa, the Great Western and principal station for trains from London and Bristol, still extant;
- Westmoreland Street, the original Great Western station, later used as a goods station, and now demolished;
- Oldfield Park, a small commuter station in a western suburb, still open with limited services on the Bristol to Weymouth route through Bath, opened in the 1920s;
- Twerton-on-Avon, a small station on a viaduct further west than Oldfield Park on the Great Western mainline, which closed in the First World War, did not reopen and was then replaced by Oldfield Park on a more convenient site;
- Hampton Row Halt, a very small station on the Great Western mainline about a mile east of Bath Spa station, where the railway runs very close to the Kennet and Avon Canal. It too closed during the First World War, having been open for only around 20 years;
- Weston (Bath), another small station about a mile west of Bath, this time on the Midland Railway line out of Green Park, served by stopping trains to Mangotsfield and Bristol and closed in 1953, though the station building still exists.
