My plan to visit all of the railway stations on the Cross-City Line, which runs between Lichfield in the north and Bromsgrove and Redditch in the south, took another step closer to completion on an unseasonably cold June Monday, the 10th.
After wrapping up warm against the cold, I caught a train to Birmingham New Street, from where I changed trains to Northfield. The train was unusually short for a Cross-City Line service, with just three carriages instead of the usual six, but I managed to find a seat to myself.
I soon arrived at Northfield railway station.
The station was first opened in September 1870 by the Midland Railway. In 1913, it was set on fire by Suffragettes, protesting for the right of women to vote, but it wasn’t badly damaged. The 1963 report by Doctor Beeching recommended the closure of Northfield station, but it was reprieved, albeit with a much-reduced service. Fifteen years later, the station was included in the new Cross-City Line. It was rebuilt, along with many of the other stations along the line. In 2013, lifts were installed to give step-free access between platforms.
Northfield has two platforms, numbered 1 and 4, similar to nearby Kings Norton. Like that station, there is an abandoned island platform in the middle of the station. A sculpture called Town and Country was installed on the abandoned platform in 1993 after the electrification of the Cross-City Line. It was designed by Rosemary Terry and made from old railway sleepers. Outside the station is another Rosemary Terry sculpture called All Seasons Tree.
I left the station and walked up Church Hill to have a look at the local church, St Laurence’s. The church dates from the 12th Century. The area immediately around the church is more reminiscent of an English rural village than the middle of Birmingham, with a smattering of ancient buildings and narrow streets with no pavements.
The main park in Northfield is Victoria Common, opened in 1897 to mark the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria, and laid out on the site of an old piece of common land called Bradley’s Field.
On the way from Victoria Common to the riverside pathway which leads to Longbridge, I passed the charming looking Northfield Library building.
Northfield Library was donated by Andrew Carnegie, the Scottish-American businessman who was at one point the richest man in the world. He provided some 2,500 libraries around the world, known as Carnegie Libraries. The land was donated by the Cadbury family, of confectionery fame. It opened in 1906, but was mysteriously burned down in February 1914, allegedly by the Suffragettes. The library was rebuilt with the original facade, and was doubled in size in 1984 with the addition of an extension.
There is a footpath which runs alongside the River Rea. Along it, I discovered the ruins of an old corn mill, one of many which used to line the river. It was demolished in 1958, but the waterwheel pit and part of the mill wall remain.
I followed the path all the way to Longbridge town centre. Longbridge was famed for car production, particularly the Austin Metro, produced between 1980 and 1998 at the Longbridge plant. In 2005, the plant was closed when the then-owners, MG Rover, went into administration, with the loss of 6,000 jobs. Car production resumed at a scaled-down plant in 2008 under new ownership.
There has been a lot of money invested in Longbridge in recent years, which now boasts a modern, clean town centre. There are several shops, a supermarket, a science and technology park and a public park called Austin Park.
Austin Park opened in 2013 as part of the redevelopment of the town centre. It is named after Herbert Austin, founder of the Austin Motor Company. There is a history of Longbridge set into one of the footpaths, but many of the entries are missing.
I returned to Longbridge railway station, just in time to miss a train back to Birmingham which would have got me home an hour earlier than planned. I covered Longbridge station in the blog post last year when I went to Barnt Green.
I chose to change trains for Burton on Trent at University, as it is much quieter than New Street and there is more chance of getting a seat on the train (or so I thought). I had a 45-minute wait there, so I checked out the new waiting room on the platform. I don’t know if it is a glitch with the newly re-built station, but the automated station announcements occur after a train has departed, and not before.
That’s it for this post. Just one more station to cover on the Cross-City Line, and that should happen sometime in July. Thanks for reading.
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