Wells (Tucker Street) railway station

Wells Tucker Street
Tucker Street goods shed (in 2007)
General information
Location	Wells, Mendip England
Coordinates	51°12′24″N 2°39′19″W / 51.206752°N 2.655371°W / 51.206752; -2.655371
Grid reference	ST543454
Platforms	2
Other information
Status	Disused
History
Pre-grouping	Cheddar Valley and Yatton Railway GWR
Post-grouping	GWR Western Region of British Railways
Key dates
1870	Opened as "Wells"
1920	Renamed "Wells Tucker Street"
1951	Renamed "Wells"
1963	Closed

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Wells (Tucker Street) railway station was the second terminus station on the Bristol and Exeter Railway's Cheddar Valley line in Somerset after the extension from the first terminus at Cheddar was opened. It was the third station on the third railway to reach the city of Wells and proved to be the longest surviving.

The station was opened with the extension of the broad gauge line from Cheddar on 5 April 1870. It was converted to standard gauge in the mid-1870s and then became Wells' main station when the Cheddar Valley line was linked up to the East Somerset Railway to provide through services from Yatton to Witham in 1878.

To achieve this through-running, the Great Western Railway, which had by this time taken over both the Bristol and Exeter and the East Somerset lines, had to run trains over rails owned by the separate Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway and through the S&DJR terminus station at Priory Road to the East Somerset station which was across the street. The East Somerset station at this stage closed, but GWR trains ran through Priory Road without stopping for a further 56 years, until in 1934 they started to call at the S&D station. Priory Road closed in 1951 with the closure of the S&D branch line from Glastonbury and Street, leaving Tucker Street as the only station in Wells.

In fact, as the "main" station on the most direct line from other centres of population, Tucker Street station was known simply as "Wells" for the first 50 years of its life, being renamed only on 12 July 1920. It resumed the Wells name on 29 October 1951 when Priory Road shut.

But Tucker Street station lasted only a dozen years longer. The Yatton to Witham line closed to passengers on 9 September 1963, though goods traffic mostly carrying stone passed through from Cheddar until 1969. The station was demolished soon after closure but the goods shed remains as commercial premises and a row of five houses built for the staff are still standing.

• Somerset Railway Stations by Mike Oakley, Dovecote Press, Wimborne, 2002, page 126.

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