A recollection by Linda Neve
My grandfather Joseph Weston joined the company in the 1900s as a plate layer at Etchingham and was there as the ganger. In his gang there was also my uncle Ernest Wells who was his son-in-law and two of his nephews the Eastwoods who were his sister’s sons.
Grandad was in charge of the track from Etchingham to Ticehurst Road which is now called Stonegate. In 1909 a goods train derailed up the track in Etchingham near to where Forge House is and where there is a crossing for a public footpath. The train ended up derailed by
Forge House because of a heavy flood. My granddad told me that it spilt shoes and butter and other items everywhere into some of the flood.
Later on his only son Albert joined the railway and was eventually in the role as an inspector at Hastings.
In 1970 my husband Nigel Neve joined when it was called British Rail and then later Network Rail and his job was on the permanent way for track maintenance at Robertsbridge and their length from Mountfield sidings back to this side of Wadhurst tunnel. Later he became a
patrolman inspecting the track from Mountfield sidings and back towards in between Robertsbridge and Etchingham and retired in 2007.
Before he left and had to work at night another gang walked the lengths in the day.
I am enclosing a photo of my grandad Weston with one of the tools and it was probably beside the station at Etchingham and it could be by the goods yard which is now the down car park. I am enclosing a little bit more about the station and how it has altered in my parents lifetime
and mine. The station has altered and also around it.
The goods yard not only had an extra rail which brought coal for the coal man for the village. When the new car park was built he then moved into the land where the bistro car park is today and also on his time before that happened there was a creamery. To exit the down platform
you had to walk to the gates for the crossing and then had to go onto some steps and into the exit to the road and it was in a covered roof building.
On that platform there was a gentleman’s toilet as well and the ladies was on the up platform.
In my parents day on the up side before the station near the crossing was a bungalow or small house and also a place where livestock could be kept ready to be put onto the train from there.
Where the up car park is now and also the viper playing area was the village rubbish dump. In those days there weren’t many cars about. The bistro now is where the station master lived.
The ticket office when I was younger was manned from probably 5am to 10pm most days and two people worked there at naturally two different shifts. On the up side of the station there in probably about the late 1940s was an extra rail where the school train for Bexhill Grammar and Bexhill Tech was parked overnight and it was visible to Rotherview where my grandparents lived and as a child we used to see it.
My oldest brother Brian went on it to Bexhill Grammar. My family have been living there since 1970 and our four boys always liked seeing the trains over the years. The barriers today are completely different when I went to school as we had a signal box on the other side of the road.
From the station and when we walked to the primary school in Etchingham towards Haremare Hall our footpath across the crossing was locked by the signalman when a train was approaching. How different it is today since my childhood but it has a lot of memories for me.
Linda Neve January 2025
