A railway footprint

There has been much talk in recent months about the proposed High-Speed railway line (HS2), and much of the talk has been from those whose homes are nearby to the proposed route.  Who would not wish to defend their patch?  At the same time those who manage the railways in the UK see the future benefits in this new route.

Midland line looking from Sandridge Road towards Sandpit Lane.  Only two
tracks were laid at first.

Anyone travelling through "our patch" of the Midland line, or peering over one of the bridge parapets, would hardly give a thought to similar debates which raged in the 1860s.  Yet, at the time they would have been major livelihood-threatening issues.  Homes would have been demolished, farmland consumed, and roads and footpaths affected.  The land owners, mainly Earls Verulam and Spencer, plus George Marten, and Thomas and John Kinder would have carefully assessed the value of what they might lose and the compensation they might receive.  Though without a voice, the land labourers would also have worried about loss of livelihood and homes.

Without land owner intervention we might have lost the Beaumont Cottages.  We certainly lost a hovel in Camp Road, near Dellfield.  The building might not have been up to much, but it was home to someone.  We might have lost the little Toll House at the junction of Hatfield Road and Camp Road; but then, it was lost anyway forty years later when the general store was built in its place at the bottom end of Stanhope Road.  In complaining about the earliest proposed alignment, the land owners discovered that a revision brought the tracks perilously close to Dell Cottage in Sandpit Lane.  A further amendment changed the tracks from one side of the house to the other, but fortunately a little further away.  And that is how the Midland Railway was built.  Dell Cottage still overlooks the passing trains.

Dell Cottage, Sandpit Lane

Big land-eating projects are never easy.  Some winners and some losers.  Not just a problem for the builders of HS2, but emotionally for those in that long and narrow stage who play out the drama of their lives in a small portion of it.  Such issues have affected the railways from the start.