Station Name: SPORLE[Source: Glen Kilday]
The long-lost railway bridge over the The Street at Sporle, looking north. The station was to the left along a path beside the house, also now lost. The date is likely to be the early 1900s, more than fifty years after the station closed.
Photo: Sporle and Palgrave History Group: Swaffham Museum Collection 1883 1:2,500 OS Map. The former station building was in place accessed from the Palgrave Road by a footpath.
1950 1:10,560 OS Map. It is clear that very little, insofar as mapping was concerned, had changed in the 100 years after closure of the station. The short-lived station building remained in place.
A Swaffham to Dereham train, date unknown, near the site of Sporle’s short-lived station. The small village can be seen in the background. The seven coach train is hauled by one of S.W. Johnson’s No. 1 Class 2-4-0s. The forty strong class were built by Sharpe, Stewart & Company and at the GER’s own Stratford Works between 1867 and 1872. All were scrapped by 1913: curiously the last to go was the prototype locomotive, No. 1.
Photo source is credited to ‘Pegg’ and the image was provided by the Sporle and Palgrave History Group A Dereham to Swaffham train seen close to the site of Sporle station; the date is not known. The locomotive is probably one of the variants of Johnson’s No.1 Class 2-4-0s although the boiler and steam-dome are different from the other image above. A GER ‘Birdcage’ brake-van is at the front of the consist.
Photo from Sporle and Palgrave History Group Looking east towards the site of Sporle station in July 1982 from The Street railway bridge.
Photo by John Mann Looking north-east from the site of Sporle station towards the surviving Dunham Road bridge
in January 2017. Photo from Norfolk by Rail Facebook Group Looking north-east along the embankment from The Street in January 2017.
Photo from Norfolk by Rail Facebook Group The railway crossed the lane that leads from Sporle to Palgrave on an overbridge. Looking north-east from the lane towards where the station stood the cut-away embankment can just be discerned in October 2017: the bridge and supports have long gone.
Photo by Glen Kilday The railway crossed the lane that leads from Sporle to Palgrave on an overbridge at this spot although there is almost no trace that it did so in October 2017. The station site was about 150 yards to the right
Photo by Glen Kilday Beside the lane from Sporle to Palgrave at the entrance to the station site is the only obvious indicator that there was a railway here. Station Cottage does not refer to the long-demolished station itself but to 1990s home.
Photo by Glen Kilday
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