(Continuation of the Article by Robert Maddocks, our Penkridge Local Historian)
Part II: "Railway Mania"
Direct references to Penkridge are highlighted in blue. Geographically challenged readers might find these maps useful.

Map of Canal Network

Map of London, North Western Railway

In Part I we saw how Lord Hatherton was an enthusiastic supporter and user of the new railways. He respected the "practical" men of the new age, the engineers and the business entrepreneurs of the Industrial Revolution who were making the country rich. He had helped the Grand Junction Railway in bringing their line through Penkridge on the way to Birmingham. From the very beginning, however, he began to harbour suspicions that in dealing with the Grand Junction company, he was not dealing with gentlemen. For Lord Hatherton, the privilege of stopping trains at Penkridge was not a "peculiar and exclusive" favour but the result of his anger directed at the company for providing "a mere, 2nd class station at Penkridge for passengers that was not a fulfilment of the condition on which I had aided them in carrying this line".

To understand how this broken promise led to growing distaste for and distrust of the GJR one has to realise that, despite his enthusiasm for the railways, his heart and soul really belonged to the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal. It was in his blood. When the canal was projected in 1766, his great uncle, Sir Edward Littleton, the builder and first occupant of Teddesley Hall, warmly supported the scheme. The canal ran for 4 miles in the Littleton estate, and passed within half a mile of Teddesley Hall. When, in October, 1840 Lord Hatherton set in motion a scheme to improve the River Severn he said, "I never was better pleased with a days work. My family has worked at this scheme for 60 years in vain. It looks as if it will now near its completion." Four years later, on seeing the work in progress, he said, "How rejoiced my great uncle Sir Edward Littleton would have been to have witnessed these works, the necessary complement of their own plan of water communication between Bristol and Wales." When Lord Hatherton went to a canal committee meeting he experienced an "agreeable family feeling". Nearly all the directors "were preceded in the committee by our fathers and grandfathers, uncles and great uncles,"

Unfortunately for Lord Hatherton and the Staffs. and Worcester, the economic climate was slowly, but surely changing. After a committee meeting in December, 1843, Lord Hatherton admitted that it was "evident that the railroads are knocking us up". In 1844 the S and W paid a dividend of £14 a share, "£4 less than the customary amount and we borrowed about £1,200 to make up the £14." The decline was slow and could have been managed, except for the fact that, under Lord Hatherton's chairmanship, the S and W Canal company were borrowing vast sums of money to lend to the Severn Commission to build the new locks and weirs needed for the improvement of the river below Stourport. Lord Hatherton had to act decisively to protect his interests.

In February 1844 surveyors with their spirit levels and chains arrived in Penkridge and, led by Mr. Bright, Lord Hatherton's agent, they set out to Tamworth, measuring a discouraging 200 foot rise over the Chase. Bright also surveyed the line out into Shropshire. In March, 1844, the GJR decided not to humour Lord Hatherton any longer and told him they would take the line through Stafford and Rugeley. Lord Hatherton remarked bitterly, "They must, therefore, go by Shugborough and pay through the nose for it to Lord Lichfield and to many others", revealing, perhaps, his main motive.

In 1844 Lord Hatherton was almost overwhelmed by the prevailing "railway mania". After visiting Stafford to see some deposited railway plans he seemed on the point of giving up. "How truly grateful should I be", he wrote, "if if I could for once in my life see a prospect of a few year's intermission to all this agitation, and attack and defence of the canal and railway interests." New railway projects sprang up daily, "so numerous as to defy all calculations as to probable results". As he faced a new session of Parliament at the end of 1844 he was deeply depressed to realise that there were no fewer than 240 railway plans and bills prepared for consideration.

The crisis point was reached when the trustees of Lord Ward, who owned large tracts of land in the Dudley area proposed a line from Wolverhampton, through Dudley, Stourbridge, Kidderminster to Worcester. It was, "in short, a line of communication which would completely annihilate the revenue on our canal". For Lord Hatherton it was an act of treachery and dishonour. He was a guardian, trustee and friend of Lord Ward and for years had worked desperately hard to keep the young man from the bankruptcy his profligate spending richly deserved. Lord Ward and the other trustees had also persuaded others to lend money and pledge security for the improvement of the Severn.

Lord Hatherton came to the conclusion that the only way to stop the proliferation of such ruinous upstart lines was to harness the power of the main line railway companies. Using their shareholders' fear of expensive competition as an excuse, he urged the Grand Junction Railway and the London to Birmingham Railway to form a defensive alliance against the numerous rival projects. This alliance (which in truth would probably have come about without Lord Hatherton's intervention) soon led to a full merger, creating the London and North Western Railway Company. At the end of the negotiations in 1844 Lord Hatherton believed that he had an agreement that they would oppose all new railroads in competition with the river and the canal until the revenue of the Severn Commission could be ascertained. Almost the first thing the London and Birmingham board did after the agreement, however, was to accept the Lord Ward plan and project a line from Worcester to Wolverhampton alongside the River Severn. This act was, according to Lord Hatherton was "one of the most dishonest things ever done". It moved him to write in his journal,

" Throughout the wide extended field of railroad speculation and controversy now occupying the exclusive attention of this country I have not discovered a single instance in which any of the companies has preferred its honour to its interest and very few cases of really honourable conduct in individuals. These are the Golden Days of Mammon."

By the beginning of 1845 the London and Birmingham Company seemed to be crushing the life out of the Staffs and Worcester Canal and Lord Hatherton. The Board of Trade sanctioned both their Worcester to Wolverhampton, and their Shrewsbury to Birmingham lines, the two lines most injurious to the canal. Lord Hatherton calculated that they would cost him £1,000 a year, probably more.

Lord Hatherton responded to the threat with an amazing burst of energy and enterprise. He promoted three new railroads himself: the Oxford to Birmingham line, the Birmingham, Wolverhampton to Dudley line and the South Staffs Junction line from Lichfield through Walsall to Dudley. He was chairman of the Oxford/Birmingham and the Birmingham/Dudley companies. He was a leading director of the Walsall line. In a delicious act of revenge he was, in fact, promoting a line from London to Birmingham in direct competition with the hitherto monopolistic LNWR. The Walsall line repaid the loyalty of his long time supporters, the industrialists of South Staffordshire, and the building of Walsall station allowed him to develop and economically exploit his land centred on Station Street, Albert Street and Littleton Street.

Lord Hatherton may have been motivated by a romantic, aristocratic sense of honour but he had been dealing with business men for 34 years. He was not naive. How could he expect to compete with the LNWR, the largest joint-stock company in the country? Perhaps one can guess the way his mind was working from a short entry in his journal for 12th July, 1845,

Having failed with the GJR and the L and B, separately, and with them combined as the LNWR, Lord Hatherton turned to the Great Western Railway. In 1846, after a long talk between Brunel and Lord Hatherton, GWR directors, sometimes including Mr. Russell, the chairman, began attending the board meetings of his two companies. After years of dealing with impudent, insolent, dishonest railwaymen who acted like lawyers (the worst insult of all) Lord Hatherton had found his ideal partners. He had never met more able men than the GWR directors and he described Mr. Russell, the chairman as "a phoenix among railway chairmen, a gentleman".

From the depths of despair at the beginning of 1845, Lord Hatherton himself rose like a phoenix in June and July 1846 as a railway magnate. In June his South Staffs Junction was approved by Parliament. He said, "We consider we have a great triumph. We entered the field last and got up the line in the greatest haste and yet, I believe it has been admirably chosen, embracing all the principal seats of the population." In July the Oxford to Birmingham Bill was passed by Parliament, with competing L and B lines almost totally rejected. Lord Hatherton was jubilant,

2. In November 1846 the LNWR promised to build a much needed goods station at the Flax Ovens. By the following spring, however, it became clear that they intended to close down Penkridge Station and put the passengers and the goods at the same place. Perhaps mindful of their recent insult, Lord Hatherton decided not to co-operate and noted, rather gleefully in his journal, "The Pennocrucians will not consent to have their station for passengers removed to the Flax Oven."

3. In April 1847 Lord Hatherton felt the LNWR was becoming over-mighty. He particularly feared their plans to buy the Shropshire Union Canal and turn it into a railway. AS A RESULT HE OFFERED TO SELL THE STAFFS AND WORCESTER CANAL TO THE GWR ! At its best this would probably have resulted in the loss of the waterway. At its worst it would have meant broad gauge expresses thundering through Penkridge on their way to North Staffordshire. Combined with Lord Hatherton's original plan for the Shrewsbury line one can imagine, just, Penkridge developing as a miniature Crewe junction. The GWR were quite interested but in the end Lord Hatherton's rural sensibilities prevailed. He could not face having a railway line just half a mile from Teddesley Hall.

Copyright © 2006 Robert Maddocks