Tower and Town, February 2016

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Marlborough Railway Stations

Extracts from the CD “Living Memories” produced by the Marlborough Oral History Group and available to borrow from Marlborough Library.

There were two stations in Marlborough: there was what they called the High Level which was up top of Cherry Orchard, and the Low Level which would have been just off the Salisbury Road. The former was used mostly for goods, things that needed to be delivered in the town, and they had two vans that used to take the goods round the town and around the different villages. And at the low level they used to load the horses from the stables. I can remember them walking in the horses from the Downs, coming down Barn Street and they’d load them up at the station to take them to the races.

The “Marlborough Donkey” they used to call it, that went from Marlborough to Swindon; it used to bring people into work before buses. All the village people could get on at their little halts and come into Marlborough. You could get to London, change at Savernake, (biggest junction there long, long since gone) transfer there and get to London Paddington from Marlborough in two hours; you can’t get there much quicker now by car.

There was accommodation for the signalman and the station master which was just off the Salisbury Road on a high bank, quite a big semi-detached house. You could walk from the low level station up to the high level station, there was a pathway going up through.

Marlborough Zone, there was a special train for Marlborough people and we used to go to the sea for the day and it was lovely.

Some of the bigger circuses came and the animals would come by railroad rather than road. I can well remember the parade they used to have from the station to the circus site. They would have a band to lead them to the big top ground where there would be the menagerie set up. I can remember Robert Brothers’ elephants coming down Salisbury road years and years ago and going to a site in Elcot Lane and all these elephants nose to tail.

There was a signal box that was just off the main platform; I think they had two signalmen there, they used to do shifts. The booking hall for the high level station was turned into accommodation and he lived there for some years, and they called it Noah’s Ark.

Susan Monson