WOODHALL SPA Community Website

Great Northern 'Loop' Line

The Horncastle & Woodhall Junction Railway

The New Line - Kirkstead to Little Steeping

A brief history of the role the railways played in the development of the village of Woodhall Spa and the businesses that depended on the spa and its waters.

Woodhall Spa was served by two railway lines and two stations. Woodhall Junction, which still stands by the River Witham near Kirkstead Bridge, was built in 1848 by the Great Northern Railway Company as one of the stations on its original main line from London to the north. Queen Victoria is understood to have passed through the station in 1851 on one of her earliest rail trips to her Scottish castle at Balmoral. She is reported not to have enjoyed the experience, and refused to leave the train at Lincoln to meet local dignitories.

The original name for this station was Kirkstead, reflecting the much greater importance of Kirkstead than Woodhall at the time. The name was changed to Woodhall Junction in 1922 as part of a publicity drive to persuade more people to visit the spa.

The locomotive portrayed on the Woodhall Spa sign is similar to a number of express locomotives which would have used the lines through Kirkstead Station at the turn of the century. Woodhall Spa itself would have been served by smaller and older rolling stock, unless a special train was coming to the village or Horncastle.

Kirkstead/Woodhall Junction was a substantial station for such a rural area. It had a large goods yard, its own motor transport department and a pumping station to draw water from the river for the locomotives. Over 20 men and women were employed there for most of its existence.

The station in Woodhall Spa itself, of which nothing now remains apart from a hump in the road at the old level crossing  site outside the Post office, and a small piece of railway fencing at the west end of the Broadway shops, was much smaller. Six people worked there for the railway company, and a single siding served a coal merchant in what is now Budgen’s car park. It was originally even smaller, just a halt on the Horncastle and Kirkstead Junction Railway, built by the Horncastle Railway Company in 1853.

The railways played a major part in the development of Woodhall Spa as a health resort and a fashionable place to visit. As the number of visitors to the spa increased, that original halt proved too basic, and it was rebuilt in 1896 to offer better facilities, including its own bookstall.

Traffic on all the railway lines in Lincolnshire declined steadiliy from the 1920’s, and despite playing a major part in the supply of the Royal Air Force and Army bases in the area during the Second World War, the private car and motor lorry continued to take away business in the post war years.

Passenger traffic to Woodhall Spa station ended in 1955, and at the junction in 1970, following the report of the infamous Dr Beeching, although a small amount of goods traffic from Lincoln to Horncastle continued to use the lines for another year.

Rad on for information on the lines

In 1846 the Great Northern purchased the Witham Navigation and construction of a 58 mile Lincolnshire 'loop' line from Peterborough to Lincoln via Spalding and Boston commenced early in 1847. Kirkstead, later renamed Woodhall Junction was one of seven stations constructed on the section between Boston and Lincoln. The line opened in 1848 and for a brief period was the main route to the north and Scotland until the main line from Peterborough to Doncaster via Grantham and Newark opened.

Travelling north from Woodhall Junction to Lincoln there were three stations, sited at Stixwould, Southrey and Bardney. Travelling south the stations were at Tattershall, Dogdyke and Langrick

The disused track bed is being used to create a new off-road route along the River Witham from Kirkstead Bridge near Woodhall Spa to Lincoln via Bardney (The Bardney to Lincoln section has already been completed). The route is called the 'Water Rail Way'.

The track bed beyond Woodhall Spa golf course to Horncastle now forms part of the Viking Way and Spa Trail footpaths.

Woodhall Junction to Woodhall Spa rail ticket

The line between Kirkstead and Little Steeping opened to goods traffic on Sunday the 1st of June 1913. The route providing a more direct and faster link between Lincoln and Skegness than previously offered by the Lincoln-Boston, Lincoln-Louth routes. There were five stations along the route, at Coningsby, Tumby Woodsde, New Bolingbroke, Stickney and Midville, before joining the East Lincolnshire line near Firsby.