Wookey railway station was a station on the

Bristol and Exeter Railway The Bristol and Exeter Railway (B&ER) was an English railway company formed to connect Bristol and Exeter. It was built on the broad gauge and its engineer was Isambard Kingdom Brunel. It opened in stages between 1841 and 1844. It was allied wi ...

Cheddar Valley line The Cheddar Valley line was a railway line in Somerset, England, running between Yatton and Witham. It was opened in parts: the first section connecting Shepton Mallet to Witham, later extended to Wells, was built by the East Somerset Railway ...

Somerset Somerset ( , ), Archaism, archaically Somersetshire ( , , ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by the Bristol Channel, Gloucestershire, and Bristol to the north, Wiltshire to the east ...

, England. The site is a 0.04

hectare The hectare (; SI symbol: ha) is a non-SI metric unit of area equal to a square with 100-metre sides (1 hm2), that is, square metres (), and is primarily used in the measurement of land. There are 100 hectares in one square kilometre. ...

geological Site of Special Scientific Interest A Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) in Great Britain, or an Area of Special Scientific Interest (ASSI) in the Isle of Man and Northern Ireland, is a conservation designation denoting a protected area in the United Kingdom and Isle ...

between Wells and

Wookey Hole Wookey Hole is a village in Somerset, England. It is the location of the Wookey Hole show caves. Location Wookey Hole is located in the civil parish of St Cuthbert Out. It is one mile north-west of the city of Wells, and lies on the border o ...

History

The station opened on 1 August 1871 about a year after the extension of the

broad gauge A broad-gauge railway is a railway with a track gauge (the distance between the rails) broader than the used by standard-gauge railways. Broad gauge of , more known as Russian gauge, is the dominant track gauge in former Soviet Union countries ...

line from Cheddar to Wells had been built. The line was converted to standard gauge in the mid-1870s and then linked up to the

East Somerset Railway The East Somerset Railway is a heritage railway in Somerset, running between Cranmore railway station, Cranmore and Mendip Vale railway station, Mendip Vale. The railway was once part of the former Cheddar Valley line that ran from Witham (S ...

to provide through services from

Yatton Yatton is a village and civil parish within the unitary authority of North Somerset, which falls within the ceremonial county of Somerset, England. It is located south-west of Bristol. Its population in 2011 was 7,552. The parish includes Clav ...

Witham Witham () is a town and civil parish in the Braintree district, in the county of Essex, England. In the 2011 census, it had a population of 25,353. It is twinned with the town of Waldbröl, Germany. Witham stands on the Roman road between the ...

in 1878. All the railways involved were absorbed into the

Great Western Railway The Great Western Railway (GWR) was a History of rail transport in Great Britain, British railway company that linked London with the southwest, west and West Midlands (region), West Midlands of England and most of Wales. It was founded in 1833, ...

in the 1870s. The station was host to a GWR

camp coach Camp may refer to: Areas of confinement, imprisonment, or for execution * Concentration camp, an internment camp for political prisoners or politically targeted demographics, such as members of national or minority ethnic groups * Exterminatio ...

from 1935 to 1939. The station closed when the line closed to passengers on 9 September 1963, though goods traffic continued to the paper mills at Wookey until 1965. Wookey station had a small wooden building, unlike some of the other stations on the line which had impressive stone buildings. The site was cleared after closure.

Site of Special Scientific Interest

It is listed in the

Geological Conservation Review The Geological Conservation Review (GCR) is produced by the UK's Joint Nature Conservation Committee. It is designed to identify those sites of national and international importance needed to show all the key scientific elements of the geological ...

because of the exposure of a thick sequence of

Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( ; referred to colloquially as the ''ice age, Ice Age'') is the geological epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was fin ...

-aged cryoturbated gravels which exhibit scour-and-fill structures in their lower part. A small, silty channel-infilling has yielded an assemblage of

palynomorph Palynology is the study of microorganisms and microscopic fragments of mega-organisms that are composed of acid-resistant organic material and occur in sediments, sedimentary rocks, and even some metasedimentary rocks. Palynomorphs are the mic ...

spores dating from the last ( Devensian) glacial period.English Nature citation sheet for the site
(accessed 9 August 2006)

References

* * * {{SSSIs Somerset geological

Wookey Wookey is a village and civil parish west of Wells, on the River Axe in Somerset, England. The parish includes the village of Henton and the nearby hamlets of Yarley and Bleadney where the River Axe travels the length of the village. There u ...

Former Great Western Railway stations Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1871 Railway stations in Great Britain closed in 1963 Sites of Special Scientific Interest in Somerset Sites of Special Scientific Interest notified in 1997 Geology of Somerset Railway cuttings in the United Kingdom

History

Site of Special Scientific Interest

See also

References