Railway sign and seat at Adlestrop bus shelter

Summary

A Great Western Railway sign and seat from the former Adlestrop Railway Station, relocated to the village as part of a bus shelter and forming a tribute to the poet Edward Thomas, his work and his sacrifice in the First World War.

Reasons for Designation

The railway bench and sign at Adlestrop Bus Shelter, Gloucestershire, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

* Historic Interest: as railway structures that inspired the poem ‘Adlestrop’ by Edward Thomas, one of England’s foremost war poets, and who fell at the Battle of Arras in 1917;
* Intactness: the sign and seat are unaltered examples of bespoke GWR fittings from the heyday of railway travel in the late C19;
* Setting: at a prominent road junction overlooking fields. The relatively large and bold sign is a striking landmark feature in its rural setting.

History

The Great Western Railway seat and sign are relocated structures from the former Adlestrop Station. The station had opened in 1853 as part of the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Line, was amalgamated into the Great Western Railway in 1863, and was closed in 1966. Following closure the station fittings were removed to a storage facility and the sign and seat were eventually given to the village of Adlestrop by British Rail. The sign and seat were installed in the village as part of a bus stop, and serve as a memorial to the station which was immortalised by (Philip) Edward Thomas (1878-1917) in the poem ‘Adlestrop’ in 1915. The sign itself was one particular focus of the poem.

Edward Thomas was inspired to write the poem when his express train made a brief stop at the station in June 1914. The poem evokes of the beauty of the English countryside in counterpoint to the horrors that were about to intervene in the lives of many with the onset of the First World War. 'Adlestrop' captured a moment of bucolic serenity and innocence that was about to be lost.

Following training, Thomas was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the Royal Garrison Artillery in November 1916. He was posted to France in January 1917 and served with no. 244 siege battery. He was killed by a shell blast on 9 April 1917 during the first hour of the Battle of Arras, and is buried in Agny military cemetery. Most of the 140 poems he wrote between 1914 and 1917 were published posthumously.

The sign and seat have been in place since the early 1970s. The bus shelter on which the sign is fixed has been refurbished since that time. A metal plaque engraved with the poem ‘Adlestrop’ was fixed to the bench in June 2014 as part of the centenary celebration of Thomas’ visit to the station.

Details

A Great Western Railway platform sign and seat of C19 date. Formerly part of Adlestrop Railway Station and moved to its current location, as part of a bus shelter, in the 1970s.

MATERIALS: a timber painted sign with metal fixings. The bench is cast-iron with timber seating.

DESCRIPTION: of standard style and construction for the Great Western Railway. The sign has a moulded trim and raised letters. The seat has three cast-iron legs with incorporated GWR monogram. The sign is fixed to a lap-board shelter* and the seat is bolted to a concrete slab floor*.


* Pursuant to s1 (5A) of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 (‘the Act’) it is declared that these aforementioned features are not of special architectural or historic interest.

Sources

Books and journals
Verey, D, Brooks, A, The Buildings of England Gloucestershire I: The Cotswolds, (2002), 133
Leigh, C, GWR Country Stations, (1982)

Websites
Thomas, (Philip) Edward (1878–1917), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2012, accessed 08/02/2017 from http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/36480?docPos=3
Adlestrop, Gloucestershire, accessed 08/02/2017 from http://www.astoft2.co.uk/glos/adlestrop.htm

End of official list entry

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