Chapeltown Central Railway Station

Chapeltown Central Railway Station

Chapeltown Central Railway Station | History and Haunted

This morning I went for a look around this old railway station; the former Chapeltown Central railway station, which closed in 1954, has been listed for auction with a guide price of £250,000.

The station opened in 1854, with the current building dating from 1877, and now lies secluded by woodland off Station Road – about half a mile north of where Chapeltown railway station stands today. The building has been converted into a private three-bedroom home but photos show it still has several original features, including the booking office window and a waiting bench.

Chapeltown Central Railway Station

The Victorian station master’s house is even reputed to be home to the ghost of a man killed during a World War Two air raid while loading tanks onto a goods train.

Chapeltown Central railway station was situated on the former South Yorkshire Railway’s Blackburn Valley line between Ecclesfield East and Westwood.

The station which was also known as Chapeltown and Thorncliffe was intended to serve Chapeltown, South Yorkshire, England, although about 1 mile (1.6 km) from its centre. It also served the works of Newton, Chambers & Company, one of the largest industrial companies in the area.

Chapeltown Central Railway Station

The original station which was mainly constructed of wood opened in 1854. The line at the time was only a single track and this was increasingly recognised as a bottleneck so plans were made to double this which began in 1875 and a new larger station was to be built on the north side of the track. The new station was built in the M.S.& L.R.’s Double Pavilion style and the building consisted of a station master’s house, booking office, goods office, and first, second, and third-class waiting rooms. In order to make room for this, an existing goods warehouse was demolished. The short single line platform was replaced by a double (up and down line) platform, an iron footbridge was constructed linking the two platforms, and a new approach road was built from the Sheffield-Barnsley turnpike road. The newly built station was officially opened to passengers on 5 November 1877.

In 1875 during excavations 150 yards east of the station by navvies who were employed to double the track between Grange Lane and Chapeltown they came across the fossilised tree stump of a Giant Club Moss which would have grown tens of metres tall. It was originally taken and displayed at High Hazels Park in Darnall before being transferred to the Sheffield Botanical Gardens in the 1980s where it can still be seen today.

Closure to passengers came on 7 December 1953 and to all traffic in April 1954. The station is now a private residence.

The property is a unique restoration project, and it goes to auction on Monday. I hope whoever purchases this won’t turn into an investment in the way of flats; only time will tell.

What a fantastic time capsule from 40 years ago.

2 thoughts on “Chapeltown Central Railway Station | History and Haunted

  1. This station is NOT HAUNTED.

    FULL DISCLOSURE – I personally edited the Wikipedia page in around 2013 as a joke (my own words were copied and pasted to create this post’s description) I wrote it purely as a wind-up for my wife to see. Earlier in the day as we approached the station from within the woodlands from Thorncliffe, I joked with her that the place was haunted and that we used to be really scared of the place as kids. She didn’t believe me so, when we got back home, I quickly edited the wiki page before calling her over to see. Being a bit smarter than me, she spotted my name in the ‘edited by’ column and we both laughed it off before forgetting to back-edit. I forgot clean all about it until it cropped up in conversation that it was allegedly haunted. Since then, dozens of charlatans who visited have BS’d that they were picking up that they could see dead WW2 ghosts (search YouTube, it’s hilarious) and you will find lots of people saying the same. It’s sad really, as I do believe but not in made up crap like this. Even Most Haunted went there to be told by the then owner that it wasn’t haunted – BUT THEN HE CHANGED HIS MIND LATER WHEN HE LEARNED THERE WAS MONEY TO BE MADE. When it was offered for sale by the auctioneers recently, I contacted them to tell them not to suggest it was haunted so not to falsify / mislead buyers. They completely ignored me (I wonder why?) before it fetched tens of thousands more than its expected value. The story even ended up on Calendar and Look North! Local politicians even refer to this as ‘special news’ and one of the great reasons to visit Sheffield… Seriously?

    I did try to take it down later but the Wiki site wouldn’t let me. Ahh well

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