Station Road

The arrival of the railway in Winslow in 1850 led to the development of Station Road to the north of the existing town. Along with the turnpike and the building of the Workhouse, this completed Winslow's realignment on a north-south rather than east-west axis. New buildings included the Swan and Station inns at either end of the road. The three sale notices below show how the property market developed in the 19th century (click on the images for the whole documents).

This sale poster from 1896 is on display in the Bell Hotel

A row of very substantial houses with carriage entrances was built on the north side of the road (now numbers 1-9; number 9 was a separate development in Venetian Gothic style). Numbers 1-7 (numbered as 1-4 Station Road Terrace) were built in 1851, and sold in 1896 by the executors of William Minter (see above). There are particulars of two of these houses in a sale catalogue of 1923 (click on the image on the right for the whole document; the houses appear to be the present-day nos. 5 & 7). Thanks to the donation of the deeds of 1 Station Road by Mr W. Barbour (they are now in the St Laurence Room archive), we have a full history of that house:

• All four houses built by Thomas Foxley, 1851/2, and mortgaged by him.
• Sold in 1886 by Misses Eliza and Martha Walker of Lenborough (who had foreclosed on the mortgage) to William Vincer Minter, Master of Winslow Workhouse for £750 (price for nos.1 and 3).
• Purchased from Mr Minter's executors in 1896 by Elizabeth Vincer Cuthbe, widow, Matron of Birmingham Workhouse, for £710 (price for nos.1 and 3). She was Mr Minter's daughter.
• Purchased from Mrs Cuthbe's executors in 1911 by George Ingram and his wife Jane Woolhouse Ingram for £630 (price for nos.1 and 3).
• Leased by George Ingram and his wife Jane Woolhouse Ingram in 1913 to Winslow Board of Guardians for 14 years for use as a children’s home, rent of £26 p.a.  No.3 was sold by Mrs Ingram to Miss Elizabeth Ingram in 1914.
• Sold by Mrs Ingram, now a widow, to Winslow Board of Guardians in 1926 for £500 for use as a children's home. Transferred from the Board of Guardians to Bucks County Council under the Local Government Act, 1929
• The children's home closed in 1938 and the house was let to Charlie Walton, stoker at Winslow Hospital, and his family. He and his wife Rhoda lived there until 1966. In 1949 Bucks CC said that it might in future be used as a children’s or old people’s home (which never actually happened). In 1950 they were asked to grant a tenancy to Winslow Hospital Management Committee.
• Sold by Bucks CC to the Ministry of Health in 1954 for £1,500.
• Sold by the Secretary of State for Social Services to Howard Quilter of Prestwood in 1969 for £3,100.
• Converted into four flats which were leased by Station Road Residents Association in 1976.
• According to www.rightmove.co.uk, Flat 3 was sold for £120,000 in 2006 and Flat 2 for £125,000 in 2004.
• Full details of all the deeds in the archive (Word document).
• Click on the images below for plans from 1926:

Plan of nos.1 and 3 Station Road, 1926

Plan of the children's home at 1 Station Road, 1926

1 Station Road in 2011

The north side of the road was developed first, and the houses originally had views across the fields to Shipton (hence the name Bellevue Terrace; see above). The gasworks were built in the 1870s next to the station, replacing the gasworks in the High Street built in 1843; the Gas House, where the manager lived, and Gas Cottages are still there (see below).

The house next to the Police Station, now Northolme, 23 Station Road, will be demolished if a planning application for new houses made in Dec 2012 is approved. The photo on the right shows how it looked before the brickwork was covered with white paint. The house was originally called Claremont, built by Charles Clare the coal merchant in the 1870s. He is listed there in the 1881 census with his wife Edith, 3 children and 1 servant. In 1884 it was valued by Wigleys for sale or mortgage to a Mr Pinham or Pinhorn (Centre for Bucks Studies D/WIG/2/1/12; valued again in 1887 for return to Mr Clare). The Lambton family lived there briefly c.1885 before moving into Redfield. In 1891 it had been renamed Northolme, and was occupied by Rolph Creasy, surgeon (general practitioner), his wife Mary, 2 children and 3 servants. In 1901 the occupant was Major Fred Coates, "living on own means", his wife Alice and 2 housemaids. He was a J.P., and is still listed in the 1945 telephone directory (tel. Winslow 18). In the 1950s and 60s it was the home of R.R. Bugg the vet, whose practice was in Horn Street. The last owners were Joe and Margaret Lowrey; Mrs Lowrey's recollections of her rally-driving career are on the Oral History page.

The south side of the road was developed from the early 1900s after the sale of the "Station Building Estate" in 28 lots in 1900, and another sale of 11 remaining plots in 1904. The latter now form the row of houses starting from no.4. The conditions of sale prohibited building a blacksmith's forge or common lodging house. Click on the images below for the 1904 sale catalogue.

Most of the houses were built in pairs, and the sale of two of them in 1940 shows some of the details (the building plot referred to is now the site of no.4). The sale of three small houses on the north side in 1942, along with houses in Avenue Road and the High Street and some "garden ground" which is now part of Courthouse Close, is recorded in another catalogue. Click on the images below for the whole documents.

More land to the south of Station Road was sold as garden plots in 1906, and the sale particulars show the layout of the road at that time. This land became the Lowndes Way estate in the 1970s. Click on the images below for the whole sale catalogue ("Occupation Road" is roughly the line of Lowndes Way).

After the Buckingham Constabulary was formed in 1857, the police station and magistrates' court were built on the north side of the road (now Courthouse Close since their demolition in 1984). The magistrates previously met at the Bell Hotel. The court closed in 1980. Dennis Biscoe, who stayed at the police station when his brother-in-law Ralph Beale was stationed there in the late 1940s and early 1950s, provided these reminiscences:

On the left [in the photo at the top of the page] was a single police officer's quarters, one-up, one-down. Behind the main door was the station office where you went through to get to the single officer's quarters. Also from the office you went into the cells area and from there into the courtroom. Also from the hallway to the cells etc as you went through on the right was a door that was always locked and this was an interior entrance to the sergeant's quarters, which were the three upper windows and the one down to the right of the main door, although there was another entrance on the side. Behind the building itself was a building that was once stables but in the 40s housed the police car. Part of this also doubled up as a coal cellar for the station. There was a storey above that at this time was never used for anything. There was also a three bedroomed house opposite this building. At the back of all this property was a footpath and over the footpath were some allotments one of which was owned by Clarence Smith a market gardener who also had a shop in the Market Square [now the Indian restaurant]. In those days there were three police officers for the Winslow area.

The Station Inn was the birthplace of the pianist Mrs Mills (nee Gladys Jordan, 1918-1978).

The former Bellevue Terrace	The former Station Inn	Gas Cottages; the Gas House is out of sight behind the cottages, and the gasholder was to the right