By Bill Gage, Guest Speaker
My first recollections of Bognor Station go back to the mid 1950s, when my family would travel down by train from Essex for holidays. As our electric train approached the station I would hope to see a steam locomotive on the local goods train, waiting in the sidings.
Once on the station concourse, a must was to head for the large cast iron machine, with a face like a clock but with letters on the dial, instead of numbers. Having placed one old penny in the slot I would turn the dial to the letters of my name and produce an aluminium name tag. Unfortunately, this machine has long gone and probably not appropriate for the technologically minded youngsters of today. However, over the past sixty years the outward appearance of the station building has changed very little in appearance in contrast to the original structure.
On 1st June 1864 the railway opened to Bognor with a mainline connection to the newly opened station at Barnham Junction. Prior to this date, Bognor’s station was situated four miles away at Woodgate on the coastal line from Brighton to Chichester which had been opened as early as 1846. At Woodgate, either Edwin Newman’s horse-drawn omnibus or Jeremiah’s Swan’s carrier cart met the five trains each day.
With the opening of the Branch, Woodgate was eventually closed in 1871. Bognor’s original station was mainly of wooden construction and the shelter consisted of one canopy 190 feet in length – hardly a fitting structure to impress the growing number of visitors to the town. Yet in spite of complaints, especially from local businessmen, who felt that the Town deserved a more imposing structure, the station remained unaltered even after storm damage for a further 35 years – until a catastrophic event.
To find out what happened, join me at the Record Office on Tuesday 26 November at 7pm and also hear about the use of railway carriages for homes, how one Bognor railwayman was crucial to the transportation of troops evacuated from Dunkirk; the story of a smaller Bognor Railway, including a major theatre disaster; Bognor’s celebrity locomotive and see film footage of the first electric train into Bognor.
There will also be a photographic display featuring both Barnham and Bognor stations.
polished she is pulling out of Bognor Station with a train bound for London.
Note: the spire of the Picturedrome Cinema in the background. c.1922
In-person tickets cost £8 (£7 for WSAS members) and online tickets cost £5. Purchase your tickets on our website. Please note that the Zoom link for the livestream will not be sent out until a few days before the talk.
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West Sussex Record Office 