Ebury Way ex-Watford Junction to Rickmansworth railway line

The Ebury Way is a very well-known foot and cycle path between Watford and Rickmansworth, and thousands of readers will be very familiar with it. Most people will know that it follows the old railway branch line to Rickmansworth from Watford Junction, and is a good story in itself: but the museum has just been given a copy of The Railway Magazine of October 1921, which carried an article on the Watford and Rickmansworth Railway, which has prompted me to have a fresh look at the line.

The Watford and Rickmansworth Railway started life in 1858 as a private project by Lord Ebury to make the four-and-a-half mile connection between Watford and Rickmansworth. The promoters were almost entirely well-known local landowners, and indeed this was a very local project, although it was intended to go on to Uxbridge to join the Great Western railway, still at that time broad gauge: making that hook-up was just one of the problems which in the end scuppered that part of the plan.

• How a much-changed bridge once looked
• A snap captured the day before this bridge was demolished
• Watford train tragedy pictures unearthed nearly 30 years on

Goods train crossing River Colne in 1959. Image: Three Rivers Museum

The fist sod of the new line was cut on Thursday, November 22, 1860 by Lord Ebury at Tolpits Farm. It was always intended that the line be a branch of the London and North Western Railway’s main line through Watford, and their senior people were at that small ceremony - they took over the original company formally in 1881. After the usual festivities, catered for by the Swan Hotel in Rickmansworth, work began, and on September 23, 1862 the annual meeting of the company heard that the work was complete – and that it was to be extended to Chesham, St Albans and Hatfield as well as Uxbridge, so it was part of quite an ambitious plan to connect the Great Northern, LNWR and the GWR - not all of it materialised, though.

Postcard of Rickmansworth Station before 1922. Image: Three Rivers Museum

Although there were problems over the build standards of the new line (the LNWR required quite a lot of extra work, not least at Rickmansworth station, before they would start running trains on it), the first trains began to run in October 1862. At first five each way a day, morning and afternoon, with a fare of 1s 6d return (first class), used the single-track line from a platform at Watford Junction, with one station at Watford High Street and the other at Rickmansworth, just opposite St Mary’s Church. It had level crossings over several roads – Loates Lane, Watford Fields and Moor Lane, with the first two later replaced by bridges: and there were several points at which farmers had crossings for their work. It went over the river Colne (still does) about half way, and the Metropolitan Railway later crossed it (still does) just before it went over the river Gade and the canal at Lot Mead before it went over the Chess and on to Rickmansworth.

The line was used for much more than passengers, of course. The branch to Croxley Green, serving the print works and the canal wharfs nearby, came off a little before the branch to Croxley Mill, which Dickinsons began to use from 1899. There were large amounts of materials in the freight, including coal heading for Rickmansworth and its gas works. Rickmansworth had several sidings under what is now Skidmore Way, and had a transhipment point (‘Batchworth Dock’) on the canal branch where, in particular, asbestos cement brought by boat from the Bell works at Copper Mill was put onto the railway – the drawing for the present wharf there are dated 1915. Benskins Brewery had a branch as well.

Batchworth Dock wharf for transhipment from canal to railway (1962). Image: Three Rivers Museum/Les Reason collection

The branch had both steam and electric trains, with the branch to Croxley Green and back across to Bushey electrified by 1917 and, for passenger trains, to Rickmansworth in 1927. People who recorded using the line included both John White, soon after it opened to move animals to market, to go into Watford and to catch main line trains, and Elizabeth Giles of Stockers Farm going to school in 1917 – we have both diaries in the museum.

The original wooden station at Rickmansworth was replaced by a brick building in 1922. The line to Rickmansworth closed to passengers in 1952 and to regular freight traffic in 1967. It never achieved Lord Ebury’s original aim of connecting the great railways through Rickmansworth, but it was of great value to local people for nearly 100 years, and for Croxley Green right up to the 1980s. When we walk or cycle it, we should remember the first promoters and their grand plan!

Both Rickmansworth Library and Three Rivers Museum provide guided walks of the Ebury Way from time to time.

More information from http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/r/rickmansworth_church_street/index.shtm