The Stour Valley Railway is a partially closed railway line that ran between , near
Cambridge
Cambridge ( ) is a List of cities in the United Kingdom, city and non-metropolitan district in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is the county town of Cambridgeshire and is located on the River Cam, north of London. As of the 2021 Unit ...
, and in
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 ...
,
England
England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...
. The line opened in sections between 1849 and 1865. The route from Shelford to
Sudbury closed on 6 March 1967 leaving only the section from Sudbury to Marks Tey, known as the
Gainsborough Line, in operation.
History
Following the (
9 & 10 Vict. c. lxxvi) and the
Colchester, Stour Valley, Sudbury and Halstead Railway Act 1847 (
10 & 11 Vict. c. xi), the Colchester, Stour Valley, Sudbury and Halstead Railway was authorised to construct a line from Marks Tey to Sudbury and then extend from Sudbury to Clare, with a branch line to
Bury St. Edmunds forking off at Long Melford. Before construction was completed, the company had changed hands twice and became part of the
Eastern Union Railway
The Eastern Union Railway (EUR) was an English railway company, at first built from Colchester to Ipswich; it opened in 1846. It was proposed when the earlier Eastern Counties Railway failed to make its promised line from Colchester to Norwich. T ...
.
The Marks Tey to Sudbury section of the line opened on 2 July 1849 and ran for five years before being taken over by the
Eastern Counties Railway on 7 August 1862.
The Company were authorised by the (
23 & 24 Vict. c. clxiii) to extend the line from to . This was however superceded and replaced the following year by a similar line authorised by the
Eastern Counties Railway Act 1861 (
24 & 25 Vict. c. ccxxxi).
In 1862 the Eastern Union Railway and the Eastern Counties Railway were amalgamated into the new
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 ...
.
After several years of protracted legal disputes, the Great Eastern Railway opened the section from to Shelford on 1 June 1865 and then the section from Sudbury to Haverhill on 9 August. The
Long Melford-Bury St Edmunds branch line from
Melford to
Bury St. Edmunds was also completed in the same year. The line was now connected to the
Colne Valley and Halstead Railway at Haverhill, serving
Castle Hedingham
Castle Hedingham is a village in northern Essex, England, located four miles west of Halstead and 3 miles southeast of Great Yeldham in the River Colne, Essex, Colne Valley on the ancient road from Colchester, Essex, to Cambridge.
It develope ...
, and .
The closure of the line in 1967 under the
Beeching Axe was the subject of a protracted battle
and a proposal, led by Haverhill Urban District Council, that local authorities subsidise the line.
The remaining operational section of the line is now known as the
Gainsborough Line.
Traffic
Passenger
There were four trains each way on weekdays between Marks Tey and Sudbury in 1850, one of which went to Colchester. When services started between Cambridge and Haverhill, there were three trains each way on weekdays. By the 1890s six passenger trains ran each way on a weekday with the majority going from Cambridge or Bury St Edmunds to Marks Tey or Colchester.
In 1964
conductor guards collected fares on the trains and all stations on the line became unstaffed apart from Haverhill and Sudbury.
Before the line closed (1966–7) there were two trains a day between Sudbury and Cambridge, four between Colchester and Cambridge and six between Marks Tey or Colchester and Sudbury, with a similar number in the reverse direction.
The service was operated by primarily by
Class 105 and
Class 108 Diesel Multiple Units, although some services were locomotive hauled.
Freight
Coal between Peterborough and Colchester and agricultural traffic were the main freight flows on the line.
Reopening
A study in 2004 looked into the possibility of reopening the route between Cambridge to Haverhill and maybe the entire line. The campaign is now being taken up by Rail Haverhill (formerly the Cambridge to Sudbury Rail Renewal Association).
With thousands of new homes planned to be built in Haverhill in coming years, the need to improve the transport infrastructure between Haverhill and Cambridge has gained greater attention.
On 12 July 2017, Members of Parliament
Matt Hancock (
West Suffolk, the constituency which includes Haverhill),
Heidi Allen (
South Cambridgeshire
South Cambridgeshire is a Non-metropolitan district, local government district of Cambridgeshire, England, with a population of 162,119 at the 2021 census. It was formed on 1 April 1974 by the merger of Chesterton Rural District and South Cambri ...
) and
Lucy Frazer (
South East Cambridgeshire) met with Councillor
James Palmer (Mayor of
Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority), other councillors and further interested parties in the
House of Commons
The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the Bicameralism, bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of ...
to discuss a
light railway
A light railway is a Rail transport, railway built at lower costs and to lower standards than typical "heavy rail": it uses lighter-weight track, and may have more Grade (slope), steep gradients and Minimum railway curve radius, tight curves to ...
link from Cambridge to Haverhill. In a Rail Haverhill press release, Matt Hancock MP stressed that "“Haverhill would benefit hugely from a railway" and went on to say "I am pushing to bring a railway back to Haverhill. There is no doubt that better communications will bring an economic boost to the town and an improved quality of life for the residents". A feasibility study was commissioned with a report due by the end of 2017.
This line has been identified by Campaign for a Better Transport as a priority 1 candidate for reopening.
References
*
External links
Rail HaverhillCampaign and petition in support of the reopening of the railway between Haverhill and Cambridge.
*{{subbrit, h/haverhill
Reshaping the Stour Valley Line
Rail transport in Essex
Rail transport in Suffolk
Rail transport in Cambridgeshire
Closed railway lines in the East of England
Railway lines opened in 1865
Railway lines closed in 1967
Standard gauge railways in England
Rail transport in Cambridge