1966: The Closing of a Railway Station That Has Been Immortalized in a Famous Poem

January 3, 1966

A longtime railway station in the village and civil parish of Adlestrop in southwestern England was closed to passenger traffic. This marked the complete shutdown of that station, which had been closed to goods traffic during the summer of 1963.

Adlestrop railway station was opened in 1853 by the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway. At that time, this depot was known as Addlestrop and Stow Road Station. The official name was shortened to Addlestrop railway station in 1862, with the second “d” dropped 21 years later.

This station achieved lasting fame after writer Edward Thomas (1878-1917) highlighted it in his still renowned poem Adlestrop. This poem is based on a railway journey undertaken by Thomas in June 1914. Adlestrop was published three weeks after Thomas, while serving as a second lieutenant in the British Army’s Royal Regiment of Artillery, was killed in action in France during World War I. The poem includes the following lines about his train’s brief stop at the station:  

“The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.

No one left and no one came

On the bare platform. What I saw

Was Adlestrop—only the name.”

Photo Credit: Ben Brooksbank (licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 license at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en)

For more information on Adlestrop railway station, please check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adlestrop_railway_station