The loss of Wootton Bassett station in 1965 was, perhaps, one of the steps-too-far of the Beeching era
When I see a statement like that I do two things: Firstly wonder what the statement is based on (ie what evidence is there to back it up), and secondly to check the facts I have at my disposal to see if I can agree with it or otherwise.
In this case it is otherwise. My first source of evidence comes from the population figures in my 1957/58 AA Members Handbook (not mine because I was 5 at the time – I acquired it somehow over the years!)
In 1957/58 the population of Wootton Bassett is shown as 3419 (presumably this figure would have been based on 1951 census returns). The population of Melksham at the same time was 7060m so on the basis of population figures alone Wootton Bassett was twice as likely to “cop it” than Melksham. But Melksham closed too, which tends to undermine the assertion about Wootton Bassett.
In contrast, the population of Swindon was 71370 and Chippenham 15140. As a matter of curiosity I looked t the figures for Wotton under Edge also mentioned in his thread, and they were 3506, so slightly larger than Wootton Bassett, and nobody ever bothered to build a railway there, despite the fact it would have been a reasonably easy thing to do as a branch from Charfield. After all, Sharpness, Dursley and Stroud/ Nailsworth all got one courtesy of the Midland Railway.
On the basis of population figures that statement cannot be supported in the slightest.
At the time (early 1960s) nobody did any commuting outside of the major urban areas. Wootton Bassett had yet to become a dormitory town for Swindon or indeed anywhere else. It was a minor market town, little more than a large village, in North Wiltshire. Putting my Surveyor’s hat on (as I often have in Wootton Bassett!
), all of the northern and eastern areas in the town have been built since 1966, and I can be that precise because in my research into local authority housing provision in North Wiltshire many years ago I found out – it’s all in the Cricklade & Wootton Bassett RDC Council minutes now held at the Wiltshire History Centre in Chippemham if anybody wants to check!)
Wootton Bassett station, like Saltford, also suffered from the fact that it was at the bottom of a hill from the place it purported to serve. In the days when most people didn’t have a car (ie when the Beeching traffic surveys were being carried out in April 1961), this was a major disincentive to rail usage. The issue also saw off Okehampton and Ilfracombe but for the opposite reason. Traffic was so thin that Swindon Corporation buses never went out there (well they wouldn’t of course because they were outside of their boundary) and the Bristol company provided a 2-hourly service between Malmesbury and Swindon that didn’t even go into the town (serving only what is now the Coped Hall roundabout), and an alternating approximately 2-hourly service from Swindon to Calne and Chippenham, so only an approximate hourly service that actually went down the High Street.
This was not the sort of traffic potential that the railway wanted or needed in the 1960s and, even if they did, what was going to stop there? The station was lumped together for closure with the other intermediate stations between Bath and Swindon. And the railway was certainly not going to stop the Londons there even without the problem of short platforms – they had enough “drawing up” to do on the old down main platform at Chippenham
It is very easy to look at what is now the case in terms of traffic porential and blithely assume that that potential has always been there. In so may cases, as indeed at Wootton Bassett, it has not.
Beeching was not given a crystal ball - he was dealing with how things were at the time...
