The Syston and Peterborough Railway was an early railway in England opened between 1846 and 1848 to form a connection from the Midland Counties Railway near Leicester to Peterborough, giving access to East Anglia over the Eastern Counties Railway. The project was part of the ambition of George Hudson to establish and maintain a monopoly of railway service over a large area of England. The surveying of the line achieved notoriety when Robert Sherard, 6th Earl of Harborough, who was hostile to railways, arranged a battle to obstruct surveys of the proposed line, and later of its construction.
The line later formed part of a new direct route from Nottingham to Kettering and London, and later still was the base of the Midland and Great Northern Joint Railway, giving access to Norfolk and parts of Suffolk.
The core of the line between Syston and Peterborough remains in use today, carrying a useful service for cross-country traffic.
Origins First railways; and the rise of George Hudson
On 10 May 1844, the Midland Railway Consolidation Act 1844 (7 & 8 Vict. c. xviii) was passed, creating the Midland Railway, a new company, by the amalgamation of three smaller concerns. From the outset, its chairman was George Hudson, the so-called 'Railway King'. Hudson was a skilful manipulator, and his methods were often dubious. He dominated several railway companies, and his ambition was to get them working together to form a near-monopoly, at a time when control of a large district of the country by a railway concern was feasible. His lines formed a through route from York to Rugby, where it joined the London and Birmingham Railway (later the London and North Western Railway—LNWR), giving access to London. Although long-distance passenger business was important, the transport of coal from colliery districts to industrial areas was dominant; and transport of manufactured goods to areas of consumption was also key.Donald J Grant, Directory of the Railway Companies of Great Britain, Matador, Kibworth Beauchamp, 2017, , pages 378 and 379P S Stevenson, The Midland Counties Railway, Railway and Canal Historical Society, 1989, , pages 29 to 31, 33 and 35Roy Williams, The Midland Railway: A New History, David & Charles, Newton Abbot, 1988, , page 39Ian Bailey, The Rise and Fall of the Railway King, Alan Sutton Publishing Limited, Stroud, 1995, , pages 47 to 50
Great Northern Railway proposed, and opposed by Hudson In 1844 promoters put together a scheme to link London and York; it became considerably modified and was later called the Great Northern Railway (GNR), to connect London and Doncaster. Hudson saw this as a competitive threat to his lines: as well as providing a more direct route between London and York than his own affiliated companies, the GNR would block the route by which Hudson's lines might connect to East Anglia. Hudson also controlled the Eastern Counties Railway, and the area it served was a large consumer of coal and agricultural supplies, hitherto not well connected to the railway network north of London. Hudson’s plan was that his Midland Railway and his Eastern Counties Railway would link and monopolise that traffic.
Accordingly Hudson went to great lengths in an attempt to frustrate the Great Northern Railway's authorisation in Parliament, but ultimately he failed and the Great Northern Railway Act 1846 (9 & 10 Vict. c. lxxi) was passed, on 26 June 1846. The GNR promoters had spent £590,355 on parliamentary expenses.Something over £73 million in 2022.John Wrottesley, The Great Northern Railway, Volume I: Origins and Development, B T Batsford Limited, London, 1979, , pages 11 to 17
Planning and construction Authorisation Having failed to kill off the Great Northern Railway promoters' scheme, Hudson now took steps to enhance his access to East Anglia. The Eastern Counties Railway was established there and was planned to reach Peterborough. Hudson now proposed a new railway from the Midland Railway main line at Syston, north of Leicester, to Peterborough, where it could link with the Eastern Counties Railway.Robin Leleux, A Regional History Of Railways Of Great Britain: Volume IX: The East Midlands, David & Charles, Newton Abbot, 1976, , pages 109 to 111 The new line was expected to cost £700,000.F S Williams, The Midland Railway: Its Rise and Progress, Bemrose and Son, Derby, 1874, page 94
The Syston and Peterborough line was authorised by an act of Parliament, the Midland Railway Act 1845 (8 & 9 Vict. c. lvi), on 30 June 1845.Clement E Stretton, The History of the Midland Railway, Methuen & Co, London, 1901, pages 80 and 81
The act authorised construction of a branch line to Peterborough from a triangular junction at Syston; the line would run through Melton Mowbray, Oakham, Luffenham and Stamford, forming a junction at Peterborough, not with the north-south Great Northern Railway, but the intended west to east Eastern Counties Railway. The Midland trains were to have running powers into the ECR's passenger station and goods yard there.Grant, pages 551 and 552
The Battle of Saxby Lord Harborough had his estate at Stapleford Park, near Saxby. The Midland Railway’s intention was to make the line of railway pass the margin of his estate, but Lord Harborough was exceptionally hostile to the railway’s incursion. As well as his personal aversion to it, he was a major shareholder in the Oakham Canal; this had opened in 1802, bringing coal to Oakham and taking agricultural produce away; the canal was threatened commercially by the railway.
In an encounter that marked the first phase of what came to be called the Battle of Saxby, seven of Hudson's surveyors arrived in the Stapleford area in November 1844 to survey the route of the line. Lord Harborough had fixed notices at the boundaries of his lands, notices prohibiting entry to his park for surveying purposes, and he had stationed estate workers at strategic points along his boundaries. As they approached the Park, the Midland surveyors were confronted by several of Lord Harborough's men, armed with pitchforks and sticks, and ordered away, even though they were still on public land. When they refused to turn back, they were "arrested", and taken by cart to the local magistrate. Since the Midland men had committed no crime, there was no legal action that could be taken against them; a policeman pointed this out to Harborough's man, and he had to be content with tipping them out of the cart into the road.
The following day the surveyors returned, supported by a large group of navvies, as well as some prize-fighters from Nottingham. Lord Harborough's men had also reinforced their numbers, and a general fight followed. The Midland surveyors were eventually put to flight. Violence escalated again a couple of days later in another battle, during which surveying equipment was badly damaged. Several prison sentences and fines were awarded to the fighting men on both sides, and surveying activities were suspended for the time being.John Rhodes, Bourne to Saxby, KMS Books, Boston, 1989, reproduced in Stewart Squires and Ken Hollamby, Building a Railway, Bourne to Saxby, Lincoln Record Society, 2009, , pages 109, 111 and 112
Further obstruction from Lord Harborough
Even after the MR had gained parliamentary approval for its route in June 1845, Lord Harborough stubbornly refused to allow any construction work to be started anywhere near his estate. Faced with this unreasonable opposition, the Midland Railway decided to re-route the line a little further away from Stapleford Park, but when the surveyors arrived, with a bodyguard, to take new measurements and levels they were once again confronted by a group of Lord Harborough's men, and the second Battle of Saxby was soon in full swing.Clark refers to this as the Battle of Saxby Bridge (over the Oakham Canal). He says that fifty surveyors were involved in this encounter. This time Lord Harborough himself participated by driving his carriage into the ranks of the surveyors. The surveying did eventually get done, and the deviation was authorised by the Midland Railway Act 1846 (9 & 10 Vict. c. li) of 16 June 1846, with the provision for a tunnel to be driven underneath a spinney of fine trees known as Cuckoo Plantation, on Lord Harborough's estate so that the offending trains would be hidden from his Lordship’s view. Unfortunately during construction the tunnel collapsed, causing subsidence to the trees and increased hostility from Harborough.Ronald H Clark, A Short History of the Midland and Great Northern Joint Railway, Goose and Son, Norwich, 1967, page 51
A legal battle followed, and yet another deviation was authorised by the (10 & 11 Vict. c. ccxv) on 22 July 1847. By this time, the two sections of line on either side of the Saxby area had already been built and were in operation, that from Syston to Melton from 1 September 1846, and from Peterborough to Stamford from 2 October 1846. Because of Lord Harborough's intransigence, it was not until 1 May 1848 that these two sections were linked, and the whole through route in operation.
The Midland Railway had agreed to purchase the Oakham Canal in April 1845, for the sum of £26,000 and 200 new Midland £40 shares. Traffic on the canal was clearly declining, and in the very dry summer of 1844 the waterway had been unnavigable for five months and goods had to be transported by road.
Opening
Notwithstanding Lord Harborough's obstructive tactics, the Midland Railway had got the authorising act for its line, and at length was able to construct the line, if not to its preferred alignment near Saxby.
The line opened in stages: from Syston South Junction (as it became) to Melton Mowbray on 1 September 1846; and from a temporary station at Stamford to the ECR station at Peterborough on 2 October 1846. There was to be a tunnel at Stamford, its construction accounting for the delay.John Gough, The Midland Railway: A Chronology, self published, 1986, , pages 29 to 31
At first the only station at Peterborough was the Eastern Counties Railway station, on a west to east alignment (much later known as Peterborough East). In fact the ECR itself did not reach there (from Ely and March) until 1847, so that for a time from 2 June 1845, it was only served by London and Birmingham Railway trains from Northampton.Leleux, page 52
The London and Birmingham Railway had suggested to the Eastern Counties Railway that a joint station would be mutually beneficial, but this was opposed by the ECR. The ECR's Ely line was not opened for goods traffic until 10 December 1846 and for passengers until 14 January 1847.
Meanwhile, traffic on the L&BR branch had so expanded that the track into Peterborough was doubled in September 1846. On 2 October 1846 of that year, still in advance of the ECR, the Midland Railway line from Stamford was opened, crossing the River Nene by a timber bridge, and using the ECR station and goods facilities. In 1923 this station was renamed Peterborough East, but for the time being it was the only Peterborough station, owned by the ECR and only used by two guest railways, the L&BR and the Midland Railway.Gordon, page 225
The Stamford to Peterborough line of the Midland Railway was of course cut off from the rest of the company’s network, and the MR arranged for it to be worked at first by the London and North Western Railway, of which the London and Birmingham Railway had become a part, and then, with a Stamford-Ely service, by the Eastern Counties Railway.Stretton, page 86 The Midland line was single track at first but soon converted to double track.P Waszak, Rail Centres: Peterborough, Booklaw Publications, Nottingham, 2005 (reprint of Ian Allan 1984), , page 10
The central section of the line opened on 20 March 1848 to goods trains, and fully on 1 May 1848.
The authorisation for the line had included an east-to-north curve at Syston. This was opened in early 1854.
Great Northern Railway at Peterborough