OLD DEVONPORT . UK
Plus parts of East Cornwall and West Devon
www.olddevonport.uk
 

©  Brian Moseley, Plymouth
Webpage created: May 06, 2018
Webpage updated: April 06, 2019

To go to the Home Page          To go to the A-Z Contents Page

RAILWAYS IN OLD DEVONPORT  |  CALLINGTON BRANCH
BRANCH LINE, BERE ALSTON STATION TO CALLINGTON STATION

SEVEN STONES HALT

Seven Stones Halt was opened between Latchley Station and Luckett Station by the Plymouth, Devonport and South Western Junction Railway Company on Wednesday June 15th 1910 for excursion traffic to the adjacent Phoenix Pleasure Ground, a popular venue for Sunday School parties.

It appears that Seven Stones Halt was more abandoned than closed.  Mr Charles Clinker records in his "Register of Closed Passenger Stations and Goods Depots" that it last appeared in a public timetable in September 1917.  In fact Seven Stones, minus the "Halt", thus inferring it was a "Station", was still listed as accepting passengers and parcels in the 1938 edition of the Railway Clearing House "Official Hand-Book of Railway Stations, etc."

The adjacent Phoenix Works, on the south side of the tracks, was opened in 1874 by the Phoenix Vitrified Brick, Paving and Fire Clay Works Limited.  They produced blue or white bricks with a glazed finish.  In addition, at the Tamar Works, just to the east of the main site, they also produced terracotta tiles that were extensively exported to Russia.  The Phoenix Works had five beehive brick kilns fed by clay from a clay pit on the southern side of the main buildings.  On the northern side of the railway line were two ponds which may have been old clay pits.  There was another, smaller, clay pit adjacent to the railway line to the west.  A loop siding extended the whole length of the Works, on the Down side of the main line.

It is said that the Phoenix Works was closed in 1883: indeed, it is marked "Disused" on the Ordnance Survey map surveyed in 1881 and published in 1883.  However, the Company had another works at Wellington, in Somerset, to which production was transferred.  On October 27th 1885 a Notice appeared in "The London Gazette" announcing that the Company was being dissolved.  It would seem that the kilns and the eastern part of the main building  soon fell into decay and by 1905 the loop siding had been reduced to a very short siding close to the road on the western side of the site.  The siding, if it was ever used, could only be accessed by Down trains.

As Seven Stones Halt does not appear in the 1956 edition of the "Hand-Book of Railway Stations, etc.", then it can be said to have been officially closed sometime between 1938 and 1956.