22 November 2023 The Coming of the Railway to Southampton

Presenter: David Brace

The title of the talk gave our speaker the opportunity to give a wide ranging and well researched presentation on the building of one of the principal trunk lines in Southern England as well as some of the railways that linked into it.

The London & Southampton Railway originated in a proposal for a ship canal to link Spithead to London but when the impossibility of the scheme became obvious, thoughts turned instead to building a railway.  The successful opening of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway had undoubtedly encouraged this and Francis Giles was appointed as engineer.  The original proposal referred to a Basingstoke-Bristol branch which meant that the line of route went through the former town rather than taking a more direct route to Southampton via Guildford and Alton.  Coaching interests were, unsurprisingly, alarmed by the scheme and from this time dated the famous remark that the ‘London and Southampton Railway will only be fit for the conveyance of persons and prawns’.

However it soon became clear that Giles’s costs were wildly optimistic and furthermore his prestige as an engineer was lowered by attacking George Stephenson for his proposal to cross Chat Moss on the Liverpool to Manchester line - still open of course to this present day! Giles jumped before he was pushed and David Brace went on to describe three titans of the Victorian railway age viz: W J Chaplin, a large road carrier who became an enthusiastic convert to the ‘new’ form of transport; Joseph Locke, who replaced Giles as the line’s engineer and finally Thomas Brassey whom Locke appointed as the main contractor.

David rounded off his informative talk with mention of several associated lines including the Basingstoke & Alton Railway immortalised in the film ‘Oh Mr Porter!’