Hooton Railway Station - History

History

Hooton station is located on the former Birkenhead Railway, a joint railway owned by the Great Western Railway and the London and North Western Railway. The station was opened by the Chester and Birkenhead Railway, a constituent of the Birkenhead Railway, which opened on 23 September 1840 and was to become until 1967 the northern end of the GWR's main line from London Paddington to Birkenhead Woodside.

In October 1839 a serious riot took place at Sutton, later named Ledsham, south of Hooton. Gangs of 'navvies' working from the Birkenhead and Chester ends of the line met up here for its completion when one of the contractors' wages clerks made off with the pay for his men. Upwards of 2,000 labourers rioted, military were sent from Liverpool and Chester including a piece of ordnance, and 28 rioters were jailed.

A branch from Hooton to Helsby via Ince & Elton opened on 1 July 1863, and another branch to Parkgate (later extended to West Kirby) followed on 1 October 1866. In its heyday, the station had 7 platforms. The West Kirby branch closed to passengers in 1957 and completely in 1962. The service to Helsby now operates from Ellesmere Port to Warrington Bank Quay, no longer serving Hooton. The station signs between Helsby & Ellesmere Port still display Hooton as the terminus of the trains.

Until the 1960s there was a cattle mart opposite the station with railway access parallel to the bay platform, then numbered Platform 1. Milk trains bound for the Black Country and London along the Great Western Main Line were assembled each evening on the then extensive sidings, and there was an extensive traffic of live cattle. Mr Parton of the Station Garage provided a taxi service with two luxurious black Packard limousines. Nowadays commercial premises occupy the site of the garage and the mart.

The Hooton Hotel, which is located adjacent to the station and the former cattle mart was briefly famous in the early 1960s as the place where workers from the newly established Vauxhall car factory were reputed to enjoy champagne rather than the more usual beer!

Until their withdrawal on the electrification of the WCML in 1967 there were regular through trains daily between London Paddington and Birkenhead Woodside, including a sleeper train, all of which were scheduled to call at Hooton: these trains carried boards along their carriage sides proclaiming "PADDINGTON BIRMINGHAM SHREWSBURY CHESTER & BIRKENHEAD". Between Birkenhead and Chester they would always be hauled by fast, powerful tank engines; between Chester and Wolverhampton a "Castle" would typically haul the train, and between Wolverhampton and Paddington a "King" (in the final years it would have been a Western Region diesel hydraulic). Each morning there was a train to Bournemouth (West) and a three-portion train, of green carriages provided by the Southern Region on alternate days, which travelled via Oxford and Reading to Redhill, where the Brighton portion was detached, thence to Ashford where it was split into a portion for Margate, and another for Dover, Deal and Sandwich. The summer timetable would typically include services to and from destinations on the Cambrian reached via Ruabon and Dolgelly (as Dolgellau was spelt by the railways at the time).

Hooton handled a substantial trade in railway goods and parcels; even unaccompanied dogs (crated) could be sent in the care of the Guard who would attend to their needs en route. In the 1950s school trunks were conveyed "PLA (Passengers' Luggage in Advance): if collected by the station lorry, transported and delivered the charge was five shillings, if simply transported and delivered it cost three and ninepence. Among the passengers were frequently crates of homing pigeons: young ones might be sent only as far as Gobowen or Wellington for release by station staff, whilst more experienced birds were sent for release at destinations all over the former Great Western system, and indeed to Europe.

Hooton's architecture was Birkenhead Joint, the style of the station buildings being similar to those at Hadlow Road which date from 1866, rather than the rough-hewn Gothic style used at Little Sutton and Ellesmere Port stations from 1863. The original 1839 Birkenhead Railway was single track and few if any relics remain today along the route which was doubled in 1847 and widened to four tracks in 1891. The signalling and both signal boxes North (now gone) and South (now replaced with a modern structure) were distinctly L&NWR, but, in spite of some local L&NWR trains and locomotives, it was very much Great Western territory - situated as it is near the end of the main line which earned that railway its major profits, even though it did not serve the rather more glamorous destinations with which the GWR liked to be, and generally is, associated.

Until the late 1960s there were waiting rooms and lavatories for Ladies and Gentlemen (with penny slots in the doors) on both island platforms and on Platform 2, the signs on Platform 6 being suspended using hooks for easy removal on those occasions when the Royal Train overnighted at Hooton. Wymans had a newspaper and bookstall until the late 1960s, but there was never a refreshment room. When the LMR's West Coast Main Line electric services to Liverpool commenced in 1967 the old Great Western main line was reduced in status to a series of local lines, Birkenhead Woodside was closed and Hooton station went into decline. The Joyce of Whitchurch clock was removed, the canopies and buildings were removed from the island platforms in the 1970s, and the only services comprised DMUs running between Rock Ferry (by then the terminus) and either Chester or Helsby. At one period during the 1970s even the sparse Sunday services ceased to stop at Hooton.

Through services to Liverpool began in 1985, when the line between Rock Ferry and Hooton was electrified; previously passengers for Liverpool had to change at Rock Ferry. Hooton then became the point where passengers from Chester and Ellesmere Port had to change for Liverpool, until further electrification work saw the electric trains reach Chester in 1993 and Ellesmere Port in 1994.

Work in preparation for the new overbridge and lift shafts started in June 2010 and they were taken into use at the end of January 2011; they are situated to the south of the station buildings and further down the platforms than the previous overbridge at the north end of the station. That overbridge, demolished in February 2011, dated from the widening of the line from two to four tracks from Ledsham Junction to Rock Ferry in 1891, the widening being another casualty of the 1970s. The previous overbridge discharged its users short of the canopies on the then platforms 2, 3&4, 5&6 which were demolished in the 1970s as a result of the "discounted cash flow" theory, popular with BR in the 1970s, which held that it was cheaper to eliminate an asset than to have a continuing maintenance obligation.