Place Wells Pre-grouping Great Western Railway 1 August 1871 (1871-08-01) Station opened Notification 1997 | Area Mendip Post-grouping Great Western Railway 9 September 1963 (1963-09-09) Station closed | |
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Original company Bristol and Exeter Railway Similar Banwell Caves, Pen Hill, King John's Hunting Lodge - A, Cheddar Reservoir, Black Down - Somerset | ||
Wookey railway station was a station on the Bristol and Exeter Railway's Cheddar Valley line in Somerset, England. The site is a 0.04 hectare geological Site of Special Scientific Interest between Wells and Wookey Hole
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History
The station opened on 1 August 1871 about a year after the extension of the broad gauge line from Cheddar to Wells had been built. The line was converted to standard gauge in the mid-1870s and then linked up to the East Somerset Railway to provide through services from Yatton to Witham in 1878. All the railways involved were absorbed into the Great Western Railway in the 1870s.
The Yatton to Witham line closed to passengers in 1963; Wookey station closed on 9 September 1963, though goods traffic continued to the paper mills at Wookey until 1965. Wookey station had a small wooden building, unlike some of the other stations on the line which had impressive stone buildings. The site was cleared after closure.
Site of Special Scientific Interest
It is listed in the Geological Conservation Review because of the exposure of a 3-metre (9.8 ft) thick sequence of Pleistocene-aged cryoturbated gravels which exhibit scour-and-fill structures in their lower part. A small, silty channel-infilling has yielded an assemblage of palynomorph spores dating from the last (Devensian) glacial period.