Blake Hall is a disused former station on the

London Underground The London Underground (also known simply as the Underground or as the Tube) is a rapid transit system serving Greater London and some parts of the adjacent home counties of Buckinghamshire, Essex and Hertfordshire in England. The Undergro ...

in the

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government. Civil parishes can trace their origin to the ancient system of parishes, w ...

of Stanford Rivers, and south from the village of

Bobbingworth Bobbingworth is a village and civil parish in the Epping Forest district of Essex, England. The village is situated approximately north-west from Chipping Ongar, west from the county town of Chelmsford Chelmsford () is a city in the Cit ...

Essex Essex ( ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the East of England, and one of the home counties. It is bordered by Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to the north, the North Sea to the east, Kent across the Thames Estuary to the ...

. It was latterly on the Central line, between North Weald and Ongar, but was originally served by the Epping to Ongar shuttle service branch line. It was opened in 1865 and named after

Blake Hall Blake Hall is a country house within the civil parish of Bobbingworth, to the north-west of Chipping Ongar, in the county Essex, England. It is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a Grade II* listed building, and its park and ...

, a country house located a mile or so to the northeast and inhabited by the Capel-Cure family of substantial local land-owners. The station was closed in 1981.

History

Blake Hall railway station 1828549 ee6f929d

Blake Hall station was opened by the

Great Eastern Railway The Great Eastern Railway (GER) was a pre-grouping British railway company, whose main line linked London Liverpool Street to Norwich and which had other lines through East Anglia. The company was grouped into the London and North Eastern R ...

on 24 April 1865, serving principally as a

goods yard A goods station (also known as a goods yard or goods depot) or freight station is, in the widest sense, a railway station where, either exclusively or predominantly, goods (or freight), such as merchandise, parcels, and manufactured items, are lo ...

carrying agricultural produce from the nearby farms into London.

Steam locomotive A steam locomotive is a locomotive that provides the force to move itself and other vehicles by means of the expansion of steam. It is fuelled by burning combustible material (usually coal, Fuel oil, oil or, rarely, Wood fuel, wood) to heat ...

s operated by

British Railways British Railways (BR), which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was a state-owned company that operated most rail transport in Great Britain from 1948 to 1997. Originally a trading brand of the Railway Executive of the British Transport Commis ...

for the Underground ran a shuttle service from Epping to Ongar, stopping at Blake Hall, from 1949 until 1957, when the line was electrified and taken over by the Underground's Central line. On 18 April 1966 the goods yard was closed and Blake Hall became a dedicated passenger station. On 17 October 1966, Sunday services were withdrawn. Blake Hall became reputed as the least-used station on the entire Underground network . Fare subsidies provided on the rest of the system were not provided on this part of the line because local government agencies for Essex and London failed to agree on their respective public transport responsibilities, and Blake Hall station was located a considerable distance from any substantial settlement. By the time the last train ran on 31 October 1981, the station was reported to have only 17 passengers per day. It was permanently closed on 2 November 1981. The Epping to Ongar branch line was closed 13 years later, on 30 September 1994. Blake Hall's station building has since been converted into a private home and the line passing the station site is now privately owned and operated as a

heritage railway A heritage railway or heritage railroad (U.S. usage) is a railway operated as living history to re-create or preserve railway scenes of the past. Heritage railways are often old railway lines preserved in a state depicting a period (or periods) ...

by the

Epping Ongar Railway The Epping Ongar Railway is a heritage railway in south-west Essex, England, run by a small number of paid staff and a team of volunteers. It was the final section of the Great Eastern Railway branch line, later the London Underground's Centra ...

. The platform was demolished after closure. A short section of the platform was later reinstated in May 2012 but this is for aesthetic purposes only, and the station remains closed.

References

;Notes ;Bibliography * * * * * * * * *

External links

* * Epping Ongar Railway's Official Website {{Central line navbox Disused London Underground stations Disused railway stations in Essex Former Great Eastern Railway stations Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1865 Railway stations in Great Britain closed in 1981 Epping Ongar Railway Former single platform tube stations

History

See also

References

External links