Tower and Town, June 2019

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Editorial: Marlborough And The Railways

Although a crucial town on the coach road to Bath and Bristol, Marlborough was bypassed by the railways. When Brunel started scheming the Great Western Railway (GWR), he planned to take it up the Thames Valley to Wootton Bassett, Chippenham and Bristol. A rival survey envisaged a line through the Vale of Pewsey parallel to the Kennet and Avon Canal. Never was a line beside the coach road from Hungerford to Marlborough seriously considered.

After the GWR was opened in 1841, trade in the town shrivelled and in 1843 the finest inn on the Bath road was sold to the founders of Marlborough College. Only in 1864 was the town connected to the rail network via the single-track Marlborough Railway (MR), branching off the Berkshire and Hampshire Extension Railway (BHER) at Savernake, running to a station at the top of Cherry Orchard. So things remained for almost 30 years.

Then the Midland Railway decided it had ambitions to reach Southampton and the Channel ports. Their subsidiary, the Midland and South West Junction Railway (MSWJR), built a line south through Cirencester and Swindon to Marlborough, with a view to reaching Southampton via BHER and other railways. However, relations with the Marlborough Railway quickly soured and the MSWJR built its own double track line south from Marlborough. The town now had two stations, the MSWJR to the east of Salisbury Road and the MR to the west.

What happened to these is told in this issue. Northbound to Swindon has become the Railway Path; southbound, some entertain hope of reopening the MR.

Alexander Kirk-Wilson