Worcestershire in the Nineteenth Century / A Complete Digest of Facts Occuring in the County since the Commencement of the year 1800

by T. C. Turberville

BIRMINGHAM AND GLOUCESTER.

This is the only railway which has yet been completed in this county, and it was promoted chiefly by parties living at the termini, who made it their only object to carry it in as straight a line as possible from point to point, with very little reference to the convenience of the towns by the way. If the shareholders could have foreseen the disastrous influence of such a policy upon their own funds, they would certainly have taken a different course, even though they felt no interest in the prosperity of the places which they so much injured by passing at considerable distances. The scheme was first projected in 1834, and the directors obtained their act on their first application to Parliament in 1836; the line was opened from Cheltenham to Bromsgrove, in June, 1840, and throughout the whole distance on the 17th of December in that year. The share capital subscribed was £1,142,125, to which £380,076 was afterwards added of money borrowed on debentures, &c. Though the line, except at the Lickey, presented no engineering difficulties, and was cheaply constructed, yet the rate of profit was very small; and in October, 1842, the £100 shares were quoted as low as 41. In January, 1845, it was amalgamated with the Bristol and Gloucester Line; and in 1846, when the broad and narrow gauge interests were each making such struggles for the ascendancy, the Midland Company entered into an arrangement to lease the line for 999 years, paying 6 per cent. upon the capital. The Great Western bid 5½ per cent., but would go no higher.

This undertaking was first introduced to the notice of the citizens of Worcester at a public meeting held on the 15th of January, 1834. The Company were at this time about to determine upon their route, and had two plans before them—the one eventually adopted viâ Cheltenham, and another that was to have come by way of Stourbridge, Kidderminster, and Worcester; the former was marked out by Mr. Brunel, the latter by a Mr. Wooddeson. In consequence of this state of things some gentlemen had formed themselves into a provisional committee with a line of their own, and Messrs. Gwinnall and Hughes, the solicitors employed, procured the calling of this meeting, in the Guildhall, Worcester, with the Mayor, W. Dent, Esq., in the chair. The committee laid their plans, in the rough, before the meeting, and asked a vote of sanction and support from the meeting. Sir Anthony Lechmere wanted no railways at all. Major Bund and Mr. Gutch proposed a month’s adjournment. But a resolution to stand by the committee, and to approve of no railway but one which came right through Worcester, was passed by a large majority. The Grand Connection Railway project took its rise from the suggestions of this committee.

The Birmingham and Gloucester Company making no attempt to obtain an act in the session of 1835, the matter was not again discussed till the 22nd October in that year, when a meeting was convened, over which Mr. J. W. Lea, Mayor, presided. Some of the provisional directors were present, and admitted that they intended to carry the line through Spetchley. Mr. John Hyde proposed that the directors should be requested to include a branch to Worcester in their scheme. Mr. Pierpoint said the main line ought to be brought, and could be brought, much nearer Worcester; and if it were not so brought, the city of Worcester ought to oppose the line by every means. A committee of conference was appointed, and the meeting adjourned for a week. It was then announced that the provisional directors of the line had agreed to have a survey taken of a deviation line from Abbott’s Wood to Norton, as well as of a direct branch to Spetchley, and lay them both before Parliament to choose from. Several speeches were made to show that the whole line had been contrived without any regard to the interests of the city and county of Worcester; and on the motion of Mr. Hooper, seconded by Mr. Deighton, it was resolved that no railway should be sanctioned by the people of Worcester that did not bring the main line within a mile of the city. On the 4th November another meeting was called, to consider the propriety of surveying a line for a railway on the western side of the Severn, to go by Kidderminster. It was evident that the Birmingham and Gloucester directors intended to adhere to their original plan, and so the citizens of Worcester determined to oppose them vigorously, and entered into a subscription, headed by fifty guineas from the corporate body, to survey a fresh line.

On the 31st March, 1836, a public meeting was called to consider the expediency of further opposing the Birmingham and Gloucester Railway Company. The directors of that company had bound themselves in a penalty of £70,000 to make a branch to Worcester, to join there the Grand Connection Railway to Wolverhampton, and on that score the opposition to their bill, on the part of the citizens of Worcester, had been withdrawn, and it had passed through committee in the Commons. Mr. Waters, who had been chiefly instrumental in calling the present meeting, said that he thought Worcester ought to join Tewkesbury in opposing the measure in the House of Lords. Mr. Pierpoint said the sum subscribed after the former meeting had been totally inadequate for the purpose of opposing the bill, and so they had to make the best terms they could—which were, that the Railway Company should make a deviation line from Abbott’s Wood to Oddingley, or forfeit £70,000. Mr. Pierpoint represented this as altogether distinct and separate from the Grand Connection Railway, although, he said, he would put the bond on the fire that night if the opposition were determined on. The Mayor asked him how he could do that if the bond were given him on behalf of the city, and he replied that he had been well advised upon the point. A great deal of personal altercation took place, and hot party feeling introduced, but the meeting ended by Mr. Pierpoint proposing the following resolution: “That in consequence of certain satisfactory arrangements having been entered into between the Birmingham and Gloucester Railway Company and the Grand Connection Railway committee, the interests of this city have been so consulted that this meeting think it unnecessary to interfere.” Mr. Waters, in a few days afterwards, published a letter in answer to “A Grand Connection Shareholder,” in which he declared Mr. Pierpoint to have been proved, by this very letter of his brother shareholder, to have deceived the whole body of his fellow citizens; inasmuch as there was only an agreement between the Birmingham and Gloucester Company and Grand Connection Company to carry out the deviation line between them; or if the Grand Connection Company did not obtain their act, then the Birmingham and Gloucester line were to make a branch from Worcester to Abbott’s Wood.

In April, 1839, the Company attempting to get a bill—to extend their rails to the Berkeley Canal at Gloucester, and to raise more capital—through Parliament, they were opposed by the Worcester Chamber of Commerce on the ground that they had not fulfilled their engagements with the city of Worcester. The bond which they had given to Mr. Pierpoint, as Chairman of the Grand Connection Railway Company, binding them in a penalty of £70,000 to make a branch from Worcester to Abbott’s Wood, was, they said, null and void, because the Grand Connection Railway Company had ceased to exist. The Parliamentary committee, principally in consequence of the able and zealous exertions of Mr. John Hill, the Town Clerk of Worcester, determined that the Company should be compelled to introduce into the bill clauses obliging them to complete the Abbott’s Wood branch before opening the main line for traffic. The Birmingham and Gloucester Company, after this decision, gave up their bill.

In 1842 the Company, having been threatened with proceedings under the bond, offered to construct a branch with a single line of rails from Spetchley to Sansome Fields, Worcester. A public meeting was called on the 15th of August, to consider this proposal. Mr. Pierpoint and Mr. John Dent moved the acceptance of the proposal. Mr. E. L. Williams and Mr. Waters moved, as an amendment, that the city should abide by the bond, and be satisfied with nothing less; and after a long discussion the Mayor put the matter to the vote, and declared the amendment carried.

In 1843 the Company brought two bills before Parliament—the one a money bill, and the other to get powers to make a branch from Bredicot to Worcester. The latter was opposed in committee by Mr. Berkeley, of Spetchley, on the ground of an agreement between him and the Company that such a division of his lands should not be made. The other was opposed by the Worcester Town Council and Chamber of Commerce, with a view of getting justice done to the city; and they procured the insertion of clauses binding the Company to abide by an award of the Board of Trade in the matter. General Pasley was accordingly sent down by the Board of Trade to survey the county in September; and upon his report, and a hearing of the several interests, they issued their award in the following April. By this the Railway Company were called upon to make a branch from Bredicot to the Bath Road, Worcester. But no further steps were ever taken in the matter. Such a branch as the one proposed would only have been in the way when the Oxford and Wolverhampton line was constructed; and with that the public mind was now occupied. As to “the bond,” that is still a subject of profound mystery, and much perplexes the good people of Worcester.