The Cheddar Valley Line
A delicious cargo
The Cheddar Valley Line, which ran from Yatton railway station through Cheddar, Wells, Shepton Mallet to Witham Junction became known as the “Strawberry Line” because of the volume of locally grown strawberries that it carried to London and Birmingham markets. Strawberries were collected from a string of Cheddar Valley village settlements sheltered under the southern slopes of the Mendip Hills between Cheddar and Wells for transporting to Yatton Junction. The line was also a vital economic link for passengers, quarrying, agriculture and general goods.
Three railway companies meet in Wells…
Incredibly, Wells once had three railway stations, each serving a different line out of the city and each operated by a separate railway company. Two of these lines would join to become our beloved Strawberry Line… with a little ‘matchmaker’ help from the third line.
Between 1856 and 1862, the East Somerset Railway built what was in effect a branch line to Shepton Mallet and Wells off the Wiltshire, Somerset and Weymouth Railway at Frome via Witham Junction. In 1859, the Somerset Central Railway constructed a branch line from Glastonbury to Wells off of its main line of Glastonbury to Highbridge (which followed the old Glastonbury canal – you can walk the trackbed at Ham Wall and Shapwick Heath). Three years later, this company merged with the Dorset Central Railway to form the famous Somerset & Dorset Joint Railway. In 1870, the Bristol & Exeter Railway built a branch line, the Cheddar Valley and Yatton Railway, from its mainline station at Yatton to Cheddar and Wells.
Two become one
In 1874, the wealthy and successful Great Western Railway Company bought the East Somerset Railway, and four years later amalgamated with the Bristol & Exeter Railway Company, absorbing with it the Cheddar Valley and Yatton Railway. GWR joined these two branch lines to create the Cheddar Valley Line from Yatton To Witham Junction, but needed to utilise a short stretch of Somerset & Dorset Joint Railway’s tracks through Wells to exit the city towards Shepton Mallet from its railway station at Tucker Street.
On the 1920s GWR map, you can see Great Western lines (including the Strawberry Line) marked in a bold thick red, with rival companies’ lines in a thin, unimpressive black!
Lost but not forgotten
Although the Glastonbury–Wells line closed in 1951, the Cheddar Valley Line endured until the mass railway closures of the 1960s (the ‘Beeching axe’). There are, however, still places where the railway age is honoured. A small section of steam railway east of Shepton Mallet has been preserved as the East Somerset heritage railway, and at Sandford, the Sandford & Banwell station has been restored and turned into a railway heritage museum, complete with locomotive and carriages. Winscombe station platform has been transformed into the popular Millennium Green, and remnants of the steam age are scattered all over the Strawberry Line.
For detailed recollections and reminiscences on the Cheddar Valley Line from Yatton to Wells, do take the time to read this charming evocation of the Somerset of yesteryear.
Branch line to Clevedon
The historic GWR Strawberry Line ran from Witham Junction to Yatton, but as early as 1847, the Bristol & Exeter Railway Company built a branch line from Yatton to Clevedon. This was also a casualty of the Beeching cuts of the 1960s. North Somerset Council, working with local volunteers, are intending to continue the modern Strawberry Line path following the disused trackbed from Yatton all the way to Clevedon. And what a perfect extension to the trail this would be, with a romantic terminus: the sea.