Droxford railway station was an intermediate station on the Meon Valley Railway, built to a design by T. P. Figgis and opened in 1903. It served the villages of Droxford, Soberton and Hambledon in Hampshire, England. The railway served a relatively lightly populated area, but was built to main line specifications in anticipation of it becoming a major route to Gosport. Consequently, although the station was built in an area with only five houses, it was designed with the capacity to handle 10-carriage trains. It initially proved successful both for the transport of goods and passengers, but services were reduced during the First World War and the subsequent recession, and the route suffered owing to competition from road transport.
In 1944, amid World War II, Droxford station was used by the Prime Minister Winston Churchill as his base during preparations for the Normandy landings. Based in an armoured train parked in the sidings at Droxford, Churchill met with numerous ministers, military commanders and leaders of allied nations. On 4 June 1944, shortly before the landings were due to take place, Free French leader Charles de Gaulle visited Churchill at Droxford, and was informed of the invasion plans. When discussing the future governance of liberated France at this meeting, Churchill expressed his view that if forced to side with France or the United States he would always choose the United States, a remark which instilled in de Gaulle a suspicion of British intentions and caused long-term damage to the postwar relationship between France and Britain.
After the war, with Britain's railway network in decline, services on the Meon Valley Railway were cut drastically. A section of the line north of Droxford was closed, reducing Droxford to being the terminus of a short branch line. In early 1955 the station closed to passengers, and in 1962 it closed to goods traffic. Following its closure, Droxford station and a section of its railway track were used for demonstrating an experimental railbus until the mid-1970s. It then briefly served as a driving school for HGV drivers, before becoming a private residence and being restored to its original appearance.
Background
The River Meon rises in East Meon, and flows through rural Hampshire before entering the Solent at Hill Head. With fertile farmland and access to the coast, the valley of the Meon has been inhabited since at least the Mesolithic era. The village of Droxford (from the Old English , "dry ford") is situated on sloping ground on the west bank of the Meon, overlooking a broad flood plain. The village has existed since at least the early 9th century; the vill of Drokeireford was granted by Ecgberht, King of Wessex to Herefrith, bishop of Winchester in 826 "for the sustenance of the monks of Winchester". At that time, the village already contained three mills. Droxford became the most important of the villages in the immediate area; by the late 19th century it housed the local post office and telegraph office, police station, workhouse and courthouse, and had its own brewery, manor house and flour mill. In the 1901 census, taken shortly before the opening of the railway, Droxford and neighbouring Soberton on the east bank of the Meon had a combined population of 1687.
Since 1851 there had been proposals to build a railway line through the Meon Valley, but all proposals were abandoned owing to high construction costs or objections from local landowners. Consequently, by the end of the 19th century the area still had no easy access to a railway line, unlike most other communities in the country.
To address this lack of service, in 1896 a group of wealthy locals proposed a railway running north–south from Basingstoke to Portsmouth. Although it would serve a lightly populated area and consequently be of little economic benefit, the proposal's supporters argued that it would be of strategic importance, connecting military facilities in Aldershot and Portsmouth with military training grounds in north Hampshire. The line was to have been operated by the Great Western Railway (GWR) and the South Eastern Railway.
The London and South Western Railway (LSWR) and London, Brighton and South Coast Railway, who between them controlled rail access to the major ports of Portsmouth and Southampton, were aghast at the prospect of the GWR controlling a route to the south coast, and lobbied against the proposal. The LSWR promised the House of Lords Committee considering the proposal that if the scheme were rejected, the LSWR would build a line from Basingstoke to Alton and from Alton south along the Meon Valley to Fareham between Southampton and Portsmouth. Although originally intending to build a light railway, when the LSWR made a formal proposal to Parliament in 1897 the proposal was for a railway built to main line specifications. The Long Depression had by this time been underway for over 20 years, severely lowering agricultural incomes and allowing the LSWR to buy land along the Meon Valley cheaply.
Station site
Droxford lies on the west of the River Meon, and at the time was a large village surrounded by farmland; the station was built on the opposite side of the river, in neighbouring Soberton. Soberton was closely associated with Droxford but had its own identity, and consisted of agricultural land interspersed with small settlements. Brockbridge, the part of Soberton chosen for the station, contained only five houses; it was chosen for its location at the meeting point of five roads close to a bridge over the Meon. It was accessible to Droxford, Soberton, and the important nearby village of Hambledon. Although sited in Soberton, the station was to be named for the more important Droxford.
The chosen site was glebe land, historically owned by the Diocese of Winchester for the benefit of the parish of Meonstoke, of which Soberton was a part. After centuries as a chapel of ease of the neighbouring parish of Meonstoke, in May 1897 Soberton became an independent parish in its own right. As such, the LSWR needed to persuade William Hammond Morley, the newly appointed rector of Soberton, of the benefits of the railway. On 22 November 1898 Morley provisionally agreed to sell the land for the station site for £425 (about £ in terms). On 9 February 1899, following undertakings from the LSWR regarding fencing around the site and arrangements for access to remaining glebe land, the land was transferred to the LSWR. Over the following weeks compensation was paid to those people whose homes or land would be affected by the building of the station or the rerouting of roads, and the LSWR was ready to proceed with construction.
Construction
Construction of the line began in 1900, beginning at Alton and working south. The station site at Droxford was near high ground, and teams dug a deep cutting through the chalk to allow level access to the station. In mid-1900, the work team digging this cutting found human remains on the site. Construction work ceased while police investigated; it was eventually determined that the remains were Anglo-Saxon. Further bodies, along with metal jewellery and weapons, were discovered, and many of the human bodies had been covered with large pieces of flint. It became obvious that the site was an Anglo-Saxon burial ground. (Later excavations in 1974 identified the site as a pagan cemetery from the 5th and early 6th centuries. A total of 41 graves were identified.) Although the digging of the cutting was further delayed owing to labour shortages, work was largely completed by January 1902. By this time a hotel had opened near the site of the future station, named the Railway Hotel.
The exact date of construction is unrecorded, but it is likely that Droxford station was built in 1902. As with other stations on the line, the station building was designed by T. P. Figgis, an Irish architect who had designed many of the stations of the City and South London Railway (later to become part of London Underground's Northern line). All the new stations for the line were of a very similar Tudor Revival design, built largely of red brick with Portland stone stonework, stained glass windows and lavatories in the shape of pagodas.
In anticipation of the route potentially becoming a major main line the station had two very long platforms, capable of handling 10-carriage trains, connected by a wooden footbridge. In addition, the station had a corrugated iron goods shed with its own siding, and a signal box on the west (northbound) platform. The two lines converged to a single track immediately north of the station, but continued southwards as a double track for just over 500 yards (450m). One line (the one laid on the same side as the main station building) was the running line to and from Wickham while the other was used as a siding - a set of points connected the two lines just south of the platforms to allow northbound trains to access the west platform and goods trains to shunt the long siding. The entire route was single track outside stations and sidings, but all cuttings, tunnels and bridges were built wide enough to accommodate a second track in future. The station building also incorporated a house for the stationmaster and his family, situated immediately to the left of the main entrance to the platforms. In addition to the stationmaster's accommodation in the main building, four cottages for railway staff were built to the immediate west of the station, and a coal yard was built near the station.
Although the station building was complete, work was proceeding more slowly than anticipated on the construction of the railway line, and the proposed opening date of 25 March 1903 was missed. While the route between Alton and Droxford was built on stable chalk, south of Droxford it entered the Reading Formation of stony clay, a surface on which it was difficult to build; in addition, there were very few water sources for the steam-powered construction machinery and for mixing concrete, necessitating the drilling of multiple deep wells. As well as this, construction work was regularly interrupted by bad weather. The Meon Valley Railway was eventually completed and inspected for fitness by the Board of Trade on 6 April 1903, and the line opened to passengers on 1 June 1903. At the time of opening, the station was staffed by a stationmaster and three signalmen, as well as assorted porters and clerical staff.
Opening
The opening was relatively low-key, and no formal ceremony took place. The opening day was Whit Monday, a bank holiday; local residents were each allowed to take one journey free of charge to the next station in either direction. (The free fares were only valid for a single journey; those taking advantage of the offer were obliged either to pay for a return ticket, or to walk back.) Although express services between London and Gosport were hauled by powerful LSWR A12 class locomotives, the only services to stop at Droxford were local trains between Fareham and Alton, hauled by less powerful LSWR 415 class tank engines built in the early 1880s. Initially, Droxford was served by six services a day in each direction, with two trains in each direction on Sundays.