Malmesbury railway station served the town of
MalmesburyMalmesbury is a market town and civil parish located in the southern Cotswolds in the county of Wiltshire, England. Historically Malmesbury was a centre for learning and home to Malmesbury Abbey...
in
WiltshireWiltshire is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset, Somerset, Hampshire, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire. It contains the unitary authority of Swindon and covers...
,
EnglandEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
. The station was on the short
Malmesbury branchThe Malmesbury branch was a six and a half mile long single track branch railway line that ran from Dauntsey railway station on the Great Western Main Line to via one intermediate station, .-History:...
from the
Great Western RailwayThe Great Western Railway was a British railway company that linked London with the south-west and west of England and most of Wales. It was founded in 1833, received its enabling Act of Parliament in 1835 and ran its first trains in 1838...
's
main lineThe Great Western Main Line is a main line railway in Great Britain that runs westwards from London Paddington station to the west of England and South Wales. The core Great Western Main Line runs from London Paddington to Temple Meads railway station in Bristol. A major branch of the Great...
from to .
Background
In 1864 the Wiltshire and Gloucestershire Railway Company was authorised to construct a line from to through
TetburyTetbury is a town and civil parish within the Cotswold district of Gloucestershire, England. It lies on the site of an ancient hill fort, on which an Anglo-Saxon monastery was founded, probably by Ine of Wessex, in 681. The population of the parish was 5,250 in the 2001 census.In the Middle Ages,...
and Malmesbury. Work started on 1 June 1885, but due to disagreements between the two major shareholders, the
Midland RailwayThe Midland Railway was a railway company in the United Kingdom from 1844 to 1922, when it became part of the London, Midland and Scottish Railway....
and the Great Western, work was stalled, and in 1871 the company was wound up.
Operations
In 1872 Government approved a cut down plan to build a line from to Malmesbury, opening on 18 December 1877. Unusually, the station was accessed by a short tunnel, and beyond the town, perhaps with the original scheme development to Stroud in mind. After the
Severn TunnelThe Severn Tunnel is a railway tunnel in the United Kingdom, linking South Gloucestershire in the west of England to Monmouthshire in south Wales under the estuary of the River Severn....
was constructed to directly connect to
South WalesThe South Wales Main Line , originally known as the London, Bristol and South Wales Direct Railway or simply as the Bristol and South Wales Direct Railway, is a branch of the Great Western Main Line in Great Britain...
, its line crossed the Malmesbury branch. In 1933, connection was made with this line, and the additional line truncated.
On 10 September 1951 the line closed to passenger traffic, and to goods 10 years later on 11 November
1962, after which the tracks were lifted.
The station site today is an industrial estate development, in part tenanted by Hilditch.