Nick Brent @ Minehead Somerset UK.
UK. Map Somerset
Minehead is a coastal town and civil parish in Somerset, England. It lies on the south bank of the Bristol Channel, 21 miles (34 km) north-west of the county town of Taunton, 12 miles (19 km) from the border with the county of Devon and in proximity of the Exmoor National Park. The parish of Minehead has a population of approximately 11,981 making it the most populous town in the western part of the Somerset West and Taunton local government district, which in turn, is the worst area in the country for social mobility. This figure includes Alcombe and Woodcombe, suburban villages which have been subsumed into Minehead.
There is evidence of human occupation in the area since the Bronze and Iron Ages. Before the Norman conquest it was held by Ælfgar, Earl of Mercia and after it by William de Moyon and his descendants, who administered the area from Dunster Castle, which was later sold to Sir George Luttrell and his family. There was a small port at Minehead by 1380, which grew into a major trading centre during the medieval period. Most trade transferred to larger ports during the 20th century, but pleasure steamers did call at the port. Major rebuilding took place in the Lower or Middle town area following a fire in 1791 and the fortunes of the town revived with the growth in sea bathing, and by 1851 was becoming a retirement centre. There was a marked increase in building during the early years of the 20th century, which resulted in the wide main shopping avenue and adjacent roads with Edwardian style architecture. The town's flood defences were improved after a storm in 1990 caused flooding.
Minehead is governed by a town council, which was created in 1983. In addition to the parish church of St. Michael on the Hill in Minehead, the separate parish church of St Michael the Archangel is situated in Church Street, Alcombe. Alcombe is also home to the Spiritualist Church in Grove Place. Since 1991, Minehead has been twinned with Saint-Berthevin, a small town close to the regional centre of Laval in the Mayenne département of France. Blenheim Gardens, which is Minehead’s largest park, was opened in 1925. The town is also the home of a Butlins Holiday Park which increases Minehead's seasonal tourist population by several thousand.
Amaya @ Minehead Somerset UK .
Somerset
Somerset is a county in South West England which borders Gloucestershire and Bristol to the north, Wiltshire to the east, Dorset to the south-east and Devon to the south-west. It is bounded to the north and west by the Severn Estuary and the Bristol Channel, its coastline facing southeastern Wales.
Minehead Harbour
The town's major tourist attraction is Butlins holiday camp. Others include: the terminus of the West Somerset Railway; the town's main ornamental park, Blenheim Gardens, off Blenheim Road; and the Minehead & West Somerset Golf Club, Somerset's oldest golf club, established in 1882, which has an 18-hole links course. A variety of sailing and wind surfing options are on offer, as well as the usual beach activities. There are many other attractions and amusement arcades, for example "Merlins" and a variety of well-known high street stores such as W H Smith and Boots, together with independent local shops. The town has both a Tesco and a Morrisons supermarket on its outskirts as well as a new Lidl.
The South West Coast Path National Trail starts at a marker, erected in Minehead in 2001, partly paid for by the South West Coast Path Association. The UK's longest long-distance countryside walking trail, it runs along the South West Coast to Poole in Dorset.
THE LONGEST HERITAGE RAILWAY IN ENGLAND
The History of the West Somerset Railway
THE RAILWAY
History
Stations
Steam Locomotives of WSR
Diesel Locomotives of WSR
Coaching Stock
Work Experience
Monthly Newsletters
Shareholders
The town of Watchet on the Bristol Channel Coast in England has a history dating back over 1000 years, during which time its harbour was in regular competition for trade with its neighbours at Minehead, Dunster, Bridgwater, Dunball, Highbridge and others in the direction of Bristol. Trading patterns fluctuated as the harbours were improved, were hit by storm damage or suffered from the periodic outbreaks of piracy.
In the 1840’s and 1850’s the Bristol and Exeter Railway began to make its way southwards as effectively an extension of Brunel’s original Great Western line from London to Bristol. This gave connections to the growing national railway network for Watchet’s rival harbours but the nearest railhead for the west Somerset town was at Taunton, some 12 miles away. One Railway was serving Watchet by 1856 but this was the West Somerset Mineral Railway which ran inland from the town to the iron ore mines in the Brendon Hills which was taken over the Bristol Channel to the furnaces of the Ebbw Vale Company in South Wales.
Local business men and dignatories in the West Somerset area began to promote the West Somerset Railway in 1856 and engaged Brunel as their Engineer. Although his name would have added prestige to the project and helped with the share issue the great engineer’s energies were being absorbed by his bridge over the Tamar at Saltash and the “Great Eastern” steam ship. Therefore the project was delegated to one of Brunel’s assistants James Burke who followed the standard route plan for taking a line over a range of hills (the Quantocks) by following one water course up to the summit and another down from the watershed. The biggest delay, as was often the case with Victorian railway building, was obtaining the land at a price that the Railway could afford.
The West Somerset was extended to Minehead in 1874 by a nominally separate company (the Minehead Railway) although in practice all the operations were run from the start by the Bristol and Exeter. It was constructed throughout to the broad gauge of 7 feet and a quarter inch but was converted to 4 feet 8 and a half in 1882. Minehead was being developed by local businessmen into a holiday resort town to garner a share of the growing enthusiasm for seaside holidays or day trips to the seaside.
The Bristol and Exeter was absorbed by the Great Western Railway in 1890 and as the holiday traffic continued to grow so station facilities, particularly platform lengths grew. The final developments were in the 1930’s as part of work creation during the Great Depression and it is from this era that the length of Minehead station platform reached its present length of just under a quarter of a mile.
During the 1950’s and early 1960’s the Railways of Britain coped, with varying degrees of success with huge loads of holiday makers throughout the Summer weekends. This was done but there were often major delays, passengers were loaded into carriages that otherwise stood idle for the rest of the year and the experience often sent them to car show rooms on their return. Even so the Minehead branch still saw through trains from London and the Midlands into the late 1960’s and it was in that decade that Butlins built a holiday centre in Minehead. However the harsh economic reality was that whilst the Minehead branch line of British Railways, as it had been after nationalisation in 1948, made money in the summer it lost it for the rest of the year. The local passenger trade was being lost to the bus services and private car ownership was growing whilst freight traffic was also fading away despite cargos of esparto grass for paper making being shipped into Watchet and taken forward by rail to a paper mill at Hele and Bradninch near Exeter. Under the infamous Beeching Report “The Reshaping of British Railways” all four branch lines from Taunton were slated for closure. That to Chard went in 1962, Yeovil followed two years later and the route to Barnstaple ceased to see trains in 1966. Trains continued to Minehead but in 1970 all school travel was switched by Somerset County Council from rail to road and that tilted the financial scales once and for all. The line closed at the start of January 1971.
However with the prolonged time taken for the line to close plans had turned to keeping it open as a private concern. Negotiations took over five years but at Easter 1976 reopening began with trains running between Minehead and Blue Anchor. By 1979 services were running over the 20 miles of line between Minehead and Bishops Lydeard, a village which is 4 miles by road from Taunton.
The intention of the new WSR was to run all-year round diesel services between Minehead and Taunton with some steam services as an additional tourist attraction. However there were problems from the start. The first stumbling block was that as an accident of transport history in South West England local bus drivers were members of the National Union of Railwaymen and the NUR were afraid that a revived WSR would take business from the local bus routes. This meant that the junction on to the main line was “blacked”.
To compound matters the rapid expansion of the WSR revival meant that the Company had out grown its financial strength and was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. The industrial steam engines purchased were unsuited for 40 mile round trips at the head of passenger trains and the diesel railcars were suffering reliability problems too. With this reliability problem (a local joke held that WSR stood for “will something run?”) the all year round train service was hardly used and when in 1981 British Rail replaced semaphore signalling in the Taunton area with colour lights it made no provision for West Somerset trains on the reasonable assumption that the WSR would not be around much longer. The track which would have given WSR trains access to Taunton station was torn up and new signals were positioned on the track bed.
As the 1980’s began the picture was at its darkest but a fight back began. A new Board came into place and sadly nearly all the paid staff were made redundant. (although many in a remarkable esprit de corps stayed on as volunteers). The winter services went, plans of trains to Taunton were shelved, and a new focus on developing the line as part of tourism and leisure came into place. Matters remained tight and Somerset County Council showed enormous faith in the future of the project by their support but by 1986 the corner was turning. More suitable steam engines were entering traffic and passenger numbers began to rise. In 1989 the WSR was able to hire “Evening Star”, the last steam engine built for British Railways in 1960 and a pattern was set for the future.
As income grew it also became possible to improve the infrastructure of the line. During the run-down in the 1960’s the line had been reduced to “basic railway” status with sidings and passing loops being torn-up, signal boxes closed and demolished and other facilities removed. Steadily these changes have been reversed although the process continues to this day with the current fund-raising project being the re-instatement of the full length of the passing loop line at Williton. This work is carried out in line with the practice of the Great Western Railway wherever that conforms with modern safety standards.
Today the Railway carries over 200,000 passengers a year making it one of the largest attractions in South West England. There are some 50 paid staff and a key input from 900 volunteers and trains run on selected dates in all months outside the main season throughout the year and daily from early April to early October.
The town's location—sea to the north and Exmoor to the south—means that transport links are limited. Minehead is located on the A39 road.
Local bus services are operated by Webberbus (seven routes), First West of England (three routes), and Quantock Motor Services (two routes).
Minehead railway station is close to the beach. The Minehead Railway was opened on 16 July 1874, linking the town to Taunton and beyond. It was operated by the Bristol and Exeter Railway which was amalgamated into the Great Western Railway in 1876. The Minehead Railway was itself absorbed into the GWR in 1897, which in turn was nationalised into British Railways in 1948. It was closed on 4 January 1971 but has since been reopened as the West Somerset Railway, which is notable for being the longest standard gauge heritage railway in Britain.
Woody Way Station
Lynton and Barnstaple Railway
Woody Bay, within the Exmoor National Park, is a station on the former Lynton and Barnstaple Railway, a narrow gauge line that ran through Exmoor from Barnstaple to Lynton and Lynmouth in North Devon. The station was situated inland, about 2 km from Woody Bay itself.
Lynton and Barnstaple Railway.
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