Notes: Spellow Station was situated on the London & North Western Railway’s (LNWR) Bootle Branch which ran from Edge Hill via the northern suburbs of Liverpool to the Docks. The line was primarily opened to cater for goods traffic and it opened from Edge Hill to Stanley on the 1st of June 1866 and through to Canada Dock on the15th of October 1866. Initially passenger services only ran as far as Tue Brook which was to the south of Spellow. In 1870 the LNWR extended the passenger service through to Canada Dock. On the 5th September 1881 a branch was opened from the Bootle Branch just to the east of Canada Dock Station to Alexander Dock and passenger services were operated on it.

At Walton which lay to the north of Liverpool the Bootle branch passed under the main Liverpool and Preston Road, which was called County Road, in a deep cutting. By the 1880s Walton had developed from a small village into a residential suburb of Liverpool. To serve the rapidly expanding area the LNWR opened Spellow station on the County Road in September 1882.

The station had a street level building on the east side of County Road which straddled the line. The building was single storey with a pitched roof. It had a main entrance door in the centre that led into the booking hall. At the rear of the building a set of steps led down to a footbridge which in turn gave access to the platforms. The line was double track so the station was provided with two platforms. The steps and the footbridge were covered over by a roof so that passengers could stay dry in wet weather.

The cutting through which the line ran at Spellow was carved out of sandstone rock. Both platforms were provided with canopies that were attached to the rock faces of the cutting.

From its opening Spellow Station was served by eastbound trains to Liverpool Lime Street and westbound services to both Canada and Alexandra Dock. Services were well used by Dock Workers as the line provided a direct link from the Walton area to the Docks. The route to Liverpool Lime Street from Spellow was anything but direct. Trains travelled towards the east, then turned south before finally heading west into the centre of Liverpool. In all they travelled nearly six miles from Spellow to Liverpool Lime Street. The route into Liverpool by road was only 2 miles. Horse drawn Trams were introduced to Walton in the late 1860s but in 1902 the tramway had been electrified providing a much better service to Liverpool than the LNWR could offer. However the passenger services from Spellow continued to offer a good service to the outer suburbs and to the docks although passenger services were vastly outnumbered by a steady stream of goods trains.

On the 1st January 1923 Spellow Station became part of the London Midland & Scottish Railway. In the summer of 1932 there were five trains from Spellow to Canada Dock, twelve trains to Alexandra Dock and seventeen trains to Liverpool Lime Street on weekdays. The first departure from Spellow was for Alexandra Dock and it left at 6.49am. The last departure was for Alexandra Dock and it departed at 10.39pm.

On the 28th of August 1940 Liverpool suffered its first bombing raid of the Second World War and in the following months the city suffered greatly. The Canada Dock branch was of national strategic importance and so was targeted by the Luftwaffe. Many of the bombs that were aimed at the line fell on the residential area around Spellow Station. In very heavy raids on the 4th of May 1941 the Leeds & Liverpool Canal was hit at Canada Dock Station. It flooded the station and passenger services were withdrawn. Although the station was brought back into use for goods it did not re-open for passenger services leaving Spellow Station with a service between Alexandra Dock and Liverpool Lime Street.     

On the 1st of January 1948 Spellow Station became part of the nationalised British Railways (London Midland Region). British Railways withdrew the passenger service that ran between Alexandra Dock and Liverpool Lime Street on the 31st of May 1948 and all of the stations on the route, including Spellow were closed to passengers. Spellow Station which had never had goods facilities closed completely.

The street level station building was used as various retail outlets after closure including as a furniture store and in more recent years as a betting office. The station infrastructure at track level fell into a state of disrepair and the footbridge and station canopies had been removed by the early 1960s. The platforms remained extant.   

After closure of the station the line remained busy with goods services and with a passenger service that was through coaches from Southport to London Euston that were joined to, or taken off Liverpool and London services at Edge Hill. The through coaches were replaced by a DMU service in the mid 1960s which continued to operate until the 9th of October 1977. Freight traffic passing through Spellow Station declined to its lowest in the late 1970s. In 1982 Canada Dock closed to goods services but this was compensated for by the fact that from 1980 container services had began to operate to the north docks. In the later half of the 1980s trainloads of imported coal started to use the line and this was followed in the 1990s by scrap metal trains.

In 2011 the line through Spellow Station was once again a busy freight route to the north Liverpool docks.

Source: An Illustrated History of Liverpool’s Railways – Paul Anderson – Irwell Press.

To see the other stations on the Canada Dock branch click on the station name: Canada Dock, Walton & Anfield, Breck Road, Tue Brook, Stanley & Edge Lane