A Stroud Valleys Railway and Canal Walk
At first glance, it might seem a bit odd to link old railway stations and halts near Stroud with Shelley’s poem Ozymandias. But if I give some famous lines a Dr Beeching tweak then I think you’ll know what I mean:
‘Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair:
No railway halt remains. Round the decay
Of those halts and crossings, and stations too,
The lone and level lines stretch far away.’
But a May time may blossom walk along canal and footpath and pavement, with teazels, marsh marigolds, iris, cow parsley, swans, ducks, a robin and a heron for company, brought the railway past back to life. And even though the construction of a railway represented the acme of Victorian modernity, there is something quite hauntingly liminal about the positioning of these lost sites. The halts and crossings and stations lie where footpaths and holloways used by handloom weavers and packhorse wayfarers cross the valley floor, thence up and down the hillsides. And some of these tracks by the lineside could well be Neolithic: climbing up to ancient sites such as long barrows on the Cotswold scarp. In short, this railway landscape is older than it appears.
We started our exploration through time and space with a walk up from Ebley Mill on the Stroudwater Navigation to locate Ebley Crossing Halt (103 miles 52 chains from Paddington) and then followed a footpath to reach the site of Cashes Green Halt (103 miles 23 chains) where we stopped to chat with two residents out for a walk: “Oh, yes. I remember the halt in the old days. I used to use it now and then. You’ve reminded me now. It was just over there. The good old days. Lovely old steam trains.”
Walk down the hill back to the canal and turn left, then leave the canal at a bridge and cross the road at a pelican to reach Beard’s Lane and the site of Downfield Crossing Halt (102 miles 72 chains) where a footbridge now stands; then return to the canal to Walbridge, near Stroud Station, then past Capel’s Viaduct (scaffolding and maintenance happening), on to Bowbridge Crossing Halt (101 miles 37 chains) and so to Ham Mill Crossing Halt (100 miles 64 chains). A milepost on the Thames & Severn Canal, near Ham Mill, tells us that we are one and a half miles from Walbridge and twenty-seven and a quarter-miles from Inglesham, where the canal meets the Thames near Lechlade and so on to London.
When you reach the Ship just by what was once the second largest inland port in the country at Brimscombe, take a short detour up the hill on the pavement to reach Brimscombe Bridge Halt (99 miles 74 chains) and peer over the sides to look at what was once a busy scene. As it was today, with trackside clearance – did the workers know what was once here, I wondered. Retrace your steps and turn right to reach a red brick canal bridge and turn left to reach a crossing opposite some flats and Ali’s Kitchen (Indian restaurant): this is the site of what was once the furiously busy Brimscombe Station (99 miles 24 chains) with banking engines to assist trains up the steep incline to Sapperton.
There’s still a line of old railings along the roadside – once GWR chocolate and cream, I imagine. And two bus stops nearby on the busy A419 in a kind of unconscious memory of the past. As William Faulkner said, “The past is not dead. It is not even past yet.”