Sir John Betjeman Visits

 

cont: from page 2

 

          Betjeman had opened an exhibition of works by his great friend and fellow Oxford graduate, Osbert Lancaster, at the Castle Museum in Norwich, and he and his wife Penelope and the Lancasters had stayed with Roy and Wilhelmine Harrod at Bayfield Brecks, near Letheringsett.

 

           Wilhelmine Harrod and the Reverend C L S Linnell were the co-authors of ‘The Shell Guide to Norfolk’ ( 1957, 1964 and 1966 ) : JB was the General Editor.

 

            A framed copy of ‘Lord Cozens Hardy’ signed by JB hangs in the Kings Head pub in Letheringsett to this day.

 

            The network of railways that once intersected the county of Norfolk have now largely disappeared following the major culling of lines by the infamous Dr Richard Beeching in the nineteen sixties. Betjeman wouldn’t have known at the time that the Kings Lynn to Hunstanton branch line had less than a decade to run, making his film even more nostalgic than even he intended. The line closed on 5 May, 1969.

 

            John Betjeman was an active preservationist, unsuccessfully campaigning to save the Euston Arch, but successfully saving St. Pancras station. There is a bronze statue of him by Martin Jennings, now standing proudly on the platform of St. Pancras International, the new Eurostar terminal.

 

          He was a leading activist in the re-opening of closed railways, becoming the first President of  the North Norfolk Railway, ‘The Poppy Line’, that is now a major tourist attraction running from Sheringham to Holt.

 

          He became a Vice-President of SRUBLUK (often pronounced “Shrub-luck”), The Society for the Reinvigoration of Unremunerative Branch Lines in the United Kingdom, whose members used to travel on those branch lines that were threatened with closure
At that time.

 

            John Betjeman will forever be synonymous with trains and in particular with Wolferton Station.  In his own words from Back to the Railway Carriage, a Home Service broadcast of March 10th, 1940, he says:” Think yourself back into the waiting room of any branch line station and learn with me the first lesson the railway teaches us: to pay a proper respect to the past.  Railways were built to last.  None of your discarding last year’s model and buying this one’s.”

 

            The marvellous ongoing regeneration of Wolferton Station, thanks largely to the efforts of its proud owner Mr Richard Brown, helps to create a present link with that glorious past.

 

            B S MORRIS

 

For more information about Sir John Betjeman,

visit, www.johnbetjeman.com

or write to:

The Betjeman Society, Chairman :

David Pattison, 41 Lakeside, Oxford, OX2 8JQ,
For details of  Membership to The Betjeman Society

and its Branches please contact
The Hon. Secretary :

Colin Wright, 6 St Annes Road, Shrewsbury, SY3 6AU.

 

 

 

Members of the Betjeman society at the Royal Station Wolferton

 

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Sir John Betjeman at St Pancras Station
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'John Betjeman Goes By Train' (British Transport Films, 1962)

with kind permission of the BFI National Archive.

 

To watch an extract of the 'DVD' King's Lynn to Wolferton

<Click Here>

 

This film is included on the BFI British Transport Films DVD compilation

'On and Off the Rails'. It is also available from the BFI Download Space.

If you would like to find out more about the British Transport Films

collection held at the BFI National Archive, or purchase BFI DVDs,

please follow the links below.

 

British Film Institute (BFI) DVD's

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British Transport Films

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