11.1870 (First appearance in Bradshaw)

At the East Coast main line level crossing on an un-named lane about 2 miles east of the A1. Close to the club house of Berwick-upon-Tweed Golf Club (Goswick Links)

North Eastern Railway

5.5.1941; reopened 7.10.1946; closed again 15.9.1958

10.8.1964

British Railways (North Eastern Region)

Station house (originally the crossing keeper’s house) north-west of the level crossing is still in residential use. Goods yard loading bank is extant north-west of the station house..

Notes: When the Berwick & Newcastle Railway opened by stages in 1847 the company provided a series of stations with elegant buildings, as well as a number of charming cottages at level crossings for the gatekeepers. At some of the crossings the company built cottages of a more generous size, and it may be that the intention was eventually to open passenger stations at these places and use the cottages as stationmasters’ houses. From the early 1850s a number of extra stations were provided; four of these were located at the crossings where the larger cottages had been built, and one was at Wind Mill Hill. The earliest Ordnance Survey large scale map of 1866 names ‘Windmillhill’ station, so it must have opened informally, perhaps for market train calls, before its first appearance in Bradshaw of November 1871 as ‘Wind Mill Hall’ - amended to ‘Wind Mill Hill’ in the next issue.

Wind Mill Hill was an isolated farm standing a short distance from the extensive coastal sand dunes, and it is remarkable that the North Eastern Railway considered it worth providing a station in such a sparsely populated rural area, with no obvious source of traffic to the east of the station. It is unlikely that the company expected to attract tourist traffic to this isolated stretch of coastline. About a mile south-east of the station was the hamlet of Goswick, but no direct track or road connected the tiny settlement and the station. However the station gained a potential source of passengers when In 1890 Berwick-upon-Tweed Golf Club established a links course on the dunes and built its club house about 100yd east of Wind Mill Hill station. On 1 January 1898 the station was renamed Goswick, the name which had been chosen for the golf course.

The initial first timetable published for Wind Mill Hill in November 1870 indicated that the station was a request stop for three weekday and two Sunday trains in each direction. In summer 1896 the North Eastern Railway timetable showed the following service for what was still Wind Mill Hill station:

The gatekeeper’s cottage was north-west of the level crossing, on the down side of the railway, but when platforms were provided the down platform was placed on the opposite side of the crossing while the up platform was staggered, facing the cottage. Early OS maps show that a siding was installed between the main line railway and the cottage, preventing the building of a down platform in front of the cottage as had been done at Smeafield station.

 It is likely that the signal box provided by the NER by October 1877 was on the down side, south-east of the crossing (therefore adjacent to the down platform) but in 1901 a new box was built on the up side, south-east of the crossing. It was an N2 design brick box but with an N4 roof.

The two-storey section of the original crossing cottage was L-shape, and like the other buildings on the route, of sandstone ashlar with a Welsh slate roof. Other familiar N&B features were a canted bay facing the railway, raised gables, ball finials (not seen on later photographs) and prominent chimneystacks. At the south-eastern end the roof sloped down over a small single-storey section. The building cost £517, being in the same price bracket (£450-520) as cottages at Smeafield, Forest Hall (then called Benton) and Plessey, and the stationmaster’s house at Lesbury, all of which had architectural similarities. The North Eastern Railway’s contributions to the station were architecturally dull, and used brick and timber rather than stone. On the down platform, adjoining the level crossing, the booking and waiting facilities were in a single-storey brick structure under a pitched roof, and a gents’ toilet was in a separate brick building immediately to the south-east. The up platform received a small timber building with a pitched roof which contained a waiting room. Both platforms were backed by brick walls capped with stone.

A goods siding was provided immediately north-west of the down platform. Unusually, adjoining the goods facilities a mission room had been established by the end of the nineteenth century, and this eventually became Windmill Hill Presbyterian Church. Its congregation must surely never have been large, as no significant residential development was ever to take place in the locality.

The Railway Clearing House Handbook of stations (1904) noted that the station possessed limited goods facilities, and NER 1913 statistics indicate that the principal goods traffic was barley and livestock - 167 wagons of livestock were dispatched that year. The company’s passenger statistics for 1911 refer to the station serving a population of only 277 and 4,612 tickets issued. This booking figure would presumably take no account of golfers travelling to the adjacent course having bought return tickets at their home station.

The winter 1912-13 timetable shows an enhanced service in comparison to 1896, with several Saturday-only calls:

In January 1923 the North Eastern Railway lines were transferred to the newly-formed London & North Eastern Railway (LNER), and this probably had little impact on Goswick station. It is thought that the LNER fitted its own running-in nameboards on each platform, but the NER oil lanterns were retained. Even though this was a station of relatively little importance by 1940 the Goswick stationmaster had charge of Scremerston, the neighbouring station on the way to Berwick, which handled very little passenger traffic. The winter 1937-38 timetable provided a similar frequency of Monday-to-Friday departures, but the additional calls on Saturday had been discontinued.

# Limited stop train

Goswick was one of the stations on the ECML in northern Northumberland which closed to passengers on 5 May 1941; elsewhere in Great Britain closures during World War II were uncommon. However on 7 October 1946 the station reopened, but Sunday services were not restored.

On 26 October 1947 a major rail accident occurred near Goswick .The ‘Flying Scotsman’ express from Edinburgh Waverley to London Kings Cross failed to slow down for a diversion and at 12.47pm was derailed and 28 people were killed. The train was scheduled to divert from the main fast line to the goods loop because of engineering work on the fast line. However, the driver failed to respond to the signals in advance of the diversion and took the 15 mph restricted turnout at approximately 60 mph. The engine, A3 No.66 ‘Merry Hampton’, and most of the train derailed and overturned. The driver, fireman and guard had all, for various reasons, failed to read the notice of the diversion posted at Haymarket depot. The driver, who was held principally at fault, had also taken an unauthorised passenger on to the footplate who may have distracted his attention. He claimed to have missed the distant signal owing to smoke from the engine obscuring his view. The home signal was at clear to allow the train to draw up slowly to the points; the signalman could not judge the speed of the train until it was too late, and was exonerated of any blame. Goswick station house was used as a triage point for the injured whilst the Presbyterian church in the goods yard was used as a mortuary.

This was the last major accident to occur on British railways before their nationalisation on 1 January 1948. On nationalisation Goswick was assigned to British Railways’ North Eastern Region.

The summer 1950 timetable was sparse, but the Thursday-only southbound call by a semi-fast train was a new introduction (no earlier than 1949). This might have been related to activities at Berwick Golf Club – adjacent to Goswick station, as noted earlier – and passengers who had arrived from Berwick on this train could return (on any weekday) in the early evening. The timetable would allow the few residents within the catchment area of Goswick station to visit Berwick market on a Saturday morning or spend a couple of hours shopping in Newcastle on Thursday or Saturday.

Summer 1950

#  Limited stop train

Goswick’s final summer timetable 1958 was decidedly unbalanced, with one southbound departure on Thursday and Saturday only when semi-fast trains called at the station, but two northbound calls on each weekday:

#  Limited stop train

Goswick was one of ten stations between Newcastle and Berwick to close to passengers on 15 September 1958. The North Eastern Region timetable, which for several years had meticulously noted closures when they occurred and provided information on bus services that could be used instead, ended this practice with the winter 1958-59 timetable and made no reference to the many newly closed stations. Some of them remained, in error, on the regional map, but Goswick station’s name was removed and the circle representing it was almost erased. Because of this regrettable change in policy it is not known if any buses were available for the stranded Goswick residents. United (a bus company ‘associated’ with British Railways) shows no services to Goswick on the accompanying map.

 Goods services lingered on at Goswick until 10 April 1964. The signal box remained in use after the station closed. It had received a new 26-lever frame in June 1958. On 20 and 21 August 1966 the up and down slow lines (formerly known as the ‘Independents’) between Goswick and Beal were abandoned. The traditional gates were replaced with barriers on 10 December 1978, and by 1979 only three levers remained in the signal box frame. The box closed on 28 March 1982 and henceforth the crossing was supervised by CCTV from Tweedmouth.  The brick base of the signal box was retained as a relay room.

It is thought that the platforms and the buildings on them were demolished in the 1960s, but the end-wall of the booking office building remained in place until at least 1972, and in 1981 the back wall of the down platform was intact and several lamp posts and empty lantern cradles stood on the fragments of the platform. Parts of the wall survive in 2015. The station house is still in residential use. A lengthy goods platform with ramp, excellently preserved and carpeted by grass, can be seen north-west of the station building.

Click here for a brief history of the East Coast Main Line
in Northumberland.

Tickets from Michael Stewart. United bus map from Alan Young. Route maps drawn by Alan Young

Click here for information from David Middlemas about the use of Goswick Sands in WW2.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

• Addyman, John F (Editor) A history of the Newcastle & Berwick Railway (North Eastern Railway Association, 2011) – especially Chapter 5 ‘The buildings’ by Bill Fawcett
• Biddle, Gordon  Victorian stations (David & Charles, 1973)
• Fawcett, Bill A history of North Eastern Railway architecture Vol 1: The Pioneers (North Eastern Railway Association 2001)
• Young, Alan Railways in Northumberland (Martin Bairstow, 2003)
• Hoole, K    Railway stations of the North East (David & Charles 1985)

See other ECML stations:
Tweedmouth, Scremerston, Beal, Smeafield, Crag Mill, Belford, Lucker, Newham, Fallodon, Christon Bank, Little Mill, Longhoughton, Lesbury, Warkworth, Longhirst, Ashington Colliery Junction, Morpeth, Stannington, Plessey, Annitsford (1st), Annitsford (2nd), Killingworth, Forest Hall, Heaton (2nd), Heaton (1st), Durham, Croft Spa, Eryholme, Otterington, Alne & Tollerton