Martyn's Blog

My latest adventure took me back to Nottinghamshire to visit Bleasby railway station, and the village itself.

My trip began, as per usual, at Burton on Trent station. From there, I changed trains at Nottingham for the train on the line from Nottingham to Lincoln which calls at Bleasby station. I have only been on this line once before, back in October when I went to Newark Castle.

About fifteen minutes after the train left Nottingham, it arrived at Bleasby station. The station is very basic. It consists of two platforms, at either end of a road which bisects the station and has a level crossing. There are shelters on both platforms, help points and timetable boards. And that is pretty much it.

The original station house is still in existence, but is privately owned now. The station opened in August 1846. It is not a very well-used station, with just 7,426 passengers in 2018-19. However, the village only has a population of about 800. When I caught the train back home, there was only one other passenger who boarded.

Bleasby itself is a very pretty village. It has a church (St. Mary’s), a primary school adjacent to the railway station, a village hall and a pub called The Waggon and Horses, which was closed when I passed by. There was a man cleaning the windows outside, and he was one of just a handful of people that I saw in my time in Bleasby.

Adjacent to the church and graveyard is Glebe Field, which according to an informative sign was the site of the vicar’s house (or vicarage, if you prefer) and a farm which was used to grow food. In the corner of the field stands the Coronation Tree, which was planted for the coronation of George VI in 1937. According to the sign in the field, the original tree died after a year, and was replaced under cover of darkness with a new tree which stands today. The villagers were none the wiser, until the secret later came out!

Also in the field is a memorial to victims of airmen who died in wartime air crashes in the Bleasby area.

As pleasant as it was in Bleasby, it was soon time to go home, so I returned to the station to catch the train back to Derby, from where I caught the train back to Burton on Trent.

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