The Strange Station Location
Why is Wickham Market railway station not in Wickham Market, but in Campsea Ashe?
Alight at Wickham Market railway station and you’ll find yourself… in Campsea Ashe! Just why it’s some 2 miles away from the village is not so much a mystery as a missed opportunity.
Not wanting to sacrifice rich farmland, short-sighted 1850s landowners – including members of the Whitmore family whose ironworks and engineering business in the town was soon to flourish – simply refused to have the railway anywhere near the parish boundaries! Ironically, a light railway between Wickham Market centre and the main railway line was mooted in 1897…
The idea was the result of a fatal accident involving a cart full of pig iron on its way to the Whitmore & Binyon works. The connecting railway to serve the works was proposed by ‘Little Willie’ Whitmore whose father and grandfather had made the original decision to banish the standard gauge railway to Campsea Ashe. But as the century was on the turn, so too were the fortunes of the Whitmore & Binyon ironworks and engineering plant. The costly narrow gauge railway idea never came to fruition and the firm closed its gates in 1901.
Wickham Market’s Whitmore & Binyon Ironworks I Find out more
In the 1920s, the livestock market was relocated from The Hill in the village centre to be more conveniently positioned closer to the railway station. The traditional weekly Monday ‘Sale’ still takes there today, but the auction house has swapped the sale of livestock for antiques, furniture and agricultural machinery.
Campsea Ashe Auction House I Find out more
