Reaching out to the Past

It's official - I am obsessed! This morning I bought a 1980 Model Railway Constructor magazine that I have wanted for ages. This is not something I have bought just to please Robbie, I haven't even told him about it because he would probably tell me to buy a magazine about Deltics instead!

I have been researching my family tree for a number of years and as many of my ancestors lived in and around Northampton I have become fascinated by old photos and old maps of the town. If only we could have street view on old maps, there so many places that I would like to see as they were when my grandparents and great grandparents knew the town. I would like to see where they lived, where they worked and the places that mattered in their lives. Most of all I would like to see the three railway stations in the town as they were then.

We think the world has progressed but in terms of public transport my grandmother's horizons were much wider than my own. She could travel to many towns and villages within the county by train and if she wanted to travel further, the train would take her; and for more local journeys she could rely on the tram. 

The first of our railway stations to close was the most convenient and most beautiful of the three. It was less than a five minute walk from St John's station to the market square. Clearly customer convenience was not a high priority even then - some things never change! Saint John's Station had opened in 1872, it was the northern terminus of the Midland Railway's Bedford to Northampton line. The station was built above street level on red brick arches which carried the line across the road and out of the town on the 21 mile journey to Bedford via Piddington (which in reality was much closer to Horton), Olney and Turvey. It was closed in July 1939 as a cost cutting measure and the services were re-routed to the much less convenient Castle Station.

Now it would take Sherlock Holmes to find any clue that a station ever stood on that spot, the station seems to have been erased from local memory and there are so few photos that you could almost suspect a cover up. So my reason for buying the old magazine was that it contains plans of St Johns and with the help of maps and old photos I can perhaps imagine the station in it's glory days.