Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

michael scuffil wrote:Incidentally, are there still CH special trains? Presumably they're needed for St Matthew's Day.

Yes there were always still special trains for St. Matthew's Day when I was there. I always wished they could get to London that quickly and directly when we were going home for holidays and leave weekends!

Wuppertal wrote: ... when we were going home for holidays and leave weekends!

Leave weekends?! I suppose that's another modern innovation. (Mind you, in the 18th century I don't think they had holidays either.)

Wuppertal wrote:

michael scuffil wrote:Incidentally, are there still CH special trains? Presumably they're needed for St Matthew's Day.

Yes there were always still special trains for St. Matthew's Day when I was there. I always wished they could get to London that quickly and directly when we were going home for holidays and leave weekends!

Back in the 50's and early 60's there were specials at the start and end of term. AFAIR they went into Victoria but the St Matthews Day ones went to London Bridge. Initially I used to take the Guildford train but eventually that was cancelled and I had to go via London.

Yes. The School Specials used to run between Victoria/CH.

Living in Dorking, I used to get a train from Dorking North direct to Horsham, then change onto the CH 'Puffer'

Incidently, I read some time ago that the pupils on one special, as it passed through Dorking North Station, threw several objects from the windows, causing consternation in rural conservative Dorking town !

J.R. wrote:

Great Plum wrote:The railway station buildings were mostly demolished in 1972 I believe and the where the main station building and the 'CH' platform was tarmaced over to extend the car park...

The island platform building survived to become the only building left - the ticket office is still sometimes open...

The signal box was there until the late 90's when it was burnt down.

There is a gate on the London platform that is normally open that still gives access to the old Guildford platforms that are still there but very overgrown...

Disgruntled pupils, perchance Plummo ?

No, rumour has it that a girl a couple of years younger than me smuggled her boyfriend onto the site... but she dumped him by the end of the weekend and he burnt it down in anger...

Incidentally it is stated in various places (incl. Wikipedia) that the original CH station was built so large because the railway company expected large numbers of boys to use it daily. But once it became clear that the school would continue to be for boarders only, the station was obviously far too big.

I cannot recall seeing anywhere in the Christ's Hospital literature anything to the effect that thought was given to making the new CH at Horsham in part a day school. I think this story probably has a single (mistaken) source. Does anybody have any ideas on this?

(CH station, which was called "Christ's Hospital -- West Horsham", was built so large, I thought, because the LBSCR thought Horsham would expand towards it. In fact Horsham expanded the other way, towards Crawley. Not least because the school bought up lots of land to ensure Horsham didn't expand west.)

I was surprised to learn from Louie Angus's book BSIBS (see Hertford board) that Hertford North station used to be much closer to the centre of town than it is now. It was on a spur (I think) and was somewhere behind the town library, near the Meads. In fact the station building was still there in the mid 70's when we were around, though it has been demolished since. It was closed in 1924 when (I think) a new line was built - possibly the Great Northern line - that skirted the town on the western side, so a new station was built on that line. See http://tinyurl.com/3dh5e3 (full link http://www.subbrit.org.uk/sb-sites/stat ... ndex.shtml) for more details