Bookham railway station

Bookham railway station is in the village of Great Bookham in Surrey, England. It also serves the adjacent village of Little Bookham. It is 20 miles 45 chains (33.1 km) down the line from London Waterloo.

Bookham
Location
Place	Great Bookham
Local authority	District of Mole Valley
Grid reference	TQ127556
Operations
Station code	BKA
Managed by	South Western Railway
Number of platforms	2
DfT category	E
Live arrivals/departures, station information and onward connections from National Rail Enquiries
Annual rail passenger usage*
2014/15	0.319 million
2015/16	0.333 million
2016/17	0.332 million
2017/18	0.321 million
2018/19	0.322 million
History
Key dates	Opened 1885 (1885)
National Rail – UK railway stations
* Annual estimated passenger usage based on sales of tickets in stated financial year(s) which end or originate at Bookham from Office of Rail and Road statistics. Methodology may vary year on year.

Bookham Station in 1962

The station is managed by South Western Railway, which provides the majority of train services; Southern also provides some peak-period services.

History

Bookham railway station was opened on 2 February 1885; the line at the time was owned by the London and South Western Railway.[1][2]

Initially the London and South Western Railway wanted to build the line into the centre of Great Bookham village itself, but as often happened in those early days of rail expansion from London, the key landowners (and villagers) were strongly opposed to that idea and forced the company to adopt a much more northerly route, resulting in the station being built nearly one mile (1.6 km) from the village high street in open country.

It effectively remained in an open-field setting until the later 1950s/early 1960s when there was a massive expansion of the village, with new estates built to fill the space between the high street and station, leaving only National Trust-owned land as a "green corridor" along parts of Church Road.

The station buildings remain largely unchanged to this day, including the footbridge and platform canopies, however, the station master's house has been sold off as a private dwelling.

Immediately to the west of the station the original goods siding was removed in the 1960s and the associated goods shed (used as a coal depot by local businessman Howard Weale at that time) was finally demolished in the 1990s having lived on for a time as a builder's yard (Tredan) and then offices.

There are now scant landmarks to identify it as the original siding and goods yard. The siding area was for a period home to a blacksmith, but that land was sold for housing development, and where the shed once stood is now a purpose-built office block.

Services

The typical service sees trains between London Waterloo and Guildford via Epsom every 30 minutes Monday to Saturday, operated by South Western Railway. In addition to these, Southern operates a small number of services during the Monday to Friday morning and evening peak periods. These operate between London Bridge via West Croydon and Sutton.[3]

South West Trains introduced an hourly service to London Waterloo via Epsom on Sundays from December 2007.

References

1. Butt, R.V.J. (1995). The Directory of Railway Stations. Yeovil: Patrick Stephens Ltd. p. 39. ISBN 1-85260-508-1. R508.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
2. 'Parishes: Great Bookham', A History of the County of Surrey: Volume 3 (1911), pp. 326–35. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=42976. Date accessed: 12 August 2007.
3. GB National Rail Timetable, December 2014 Edition – Tables 152 & 182

External links

• Train times and station information for Bookham railway station from National Rail

Preceding station	National Rail			Following station
Leatherhead		South Western Railway Mole Valley Line Bookham Branch		Effingham Junction
		Southern Peak periods only