Woody Bay Station, lever hut and stable

Summary

Woody Bay Station was built in 1898 for the Lynton & Barnstaple Railway; it was possibly designed by Robert (Bob) Jones. The Lynton & Barnstaple Railway was taken over by the Southern Railway in 1923, and the line was closed in 1935. Woody Bay Station reopened as a heritage railway station in 2004.

Reasons for Designation

Woody Bay Station, near Parracombe, Devon is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:
* as the best-surviving example of a station building on the Lynton & Barnstaple Railway, which operated from 1898 and closed under the Southern Railway in 1935;
* despite the loss of the ticket office fittings, the building retains a good proportion of historic fabric both externally and within the stationmaster’s accommodation;
* the station’s architectural design is neat and accomplished, and cleverly relates to the C19 tourist publicity of the area as ‘Little Switzerland’.

Historic interest:
* for the railway’s association with Sir George Newnes, who did much for the communities and tourism in the Lynton and Lynmouth area in the late C19.

Group value:
* with the Grade II-listed top and bottom waiting room at the Lynton & Lynmouth Cliff Railway, which were possibly also designed by Bob Jones; and with the Grade II listed Chelfham Viaduct which was built for the Lynton & Barnstaple Railway.

History

The settlements around Devon’s north coast and the fringes of Exmoor lay in relative obscurity to tourists until the arrival of the Bristol & Exeter Railway to Bridgwater and Minehead in 1841 and the construction of the Devon & Somerset Railway from Taunton to Barnstaple in 1854. Coaches from Barnstaple to Ilfracombe, Combe Martin and Lynton were introduced in the 1860s, although the 18-mile journey to Lynton took almost three hours, with changes in horses at Parracombe. In the 1880s various schemes were proposed to make travelling to Lynton and Lynmouth easier, but all were abandoned due to the picturesquely-challenging north Devon topography and high costs.

Sir George Newnes (1852-1910) was a Derbyshire businessman who made his wealth from publishing, most notably ‘Tit-Bits’ and ‘The Strand’ magazines. Newnes built a holiday home at Lynton and saw potential for investment to improve accessibility between there and Lynmouth. As such, in 1887 Newnes funded the Lynton & Lynmouth Cliff Railway, a water-powered funicular which opened in 1890. In the early 1890s Newnes, with EB Jeune and Thomas Hewitt, inspired by the narrow-gauge freight railways of North Wales as a way to overcome north Devon’s challenging topography, proposed a narrow-gauge passenger railway to connect Lynton to Barnstaple, opening up the scenery to thousands who would otherwise never experience it.
The Lynton & Barnstaple Railway Bill received Royal Assent on 27 June 1895, a budget of £70,000 was authorised for its construction, and a completion date of summer 1897 was given. Newnes, Jeune and Hewitt were joined by WH Halliday on the board of directors for the new railway, and Sir James Szlumper appointed as consulting engineer. The line was to run for 19 miles from Barnstaple and have principal stations at Chelfham, Bratton Fleming, Blackmoor Gate and Martinhoe Cross (later Woody Bay) with the terminus on the outskirts of Lynton. The first sod of the railway was cut at Lynton by Lady Newnes on 17 September 1895. The construction contract was let to J Nuttal of Manchester who began work in March 1896 under the direction of the railway company’s resident engineer, Frank W Chanter. Contracts for two of the stations went to Robert (Bob) Jones of Lynton; this may have included the design and construction of Woody Bay Station. The construction of the railway was not without its issues, but Sir George and Lady Newnes declared the new railway open to the public on 11 May 1898 with a ceremony at Lynton Station and processions, train rides and celebrations throughout the day. The railway had cost £127,268. The passenger rolling stock was painted in burgundy and white with a specially-designed crest featuring the Barnstaple borough arms and a deer. The railway’s early history, route, equipment and stock are well-described elsewhere (see Catchpole, in Sources).
A 400ft-long viaduct was constructed at Chelfham, and station buildings at Lynton, Blackmoor and Woody Bay were designed in ‘the Nuremburg style’. The style reflected the description of the area as ‘Little Switzerland’, a nickname gained after the writer Robert Southey had described Lynton as a ‘Swiss village’ in 1799.

Located 16 miles from Barnstaple, Woody Bay Station was built to serve the settlement at Woody Bay itself, although its speculated prominence as a tourist destination was a failure. Due to its remote location, Woody Bay Station was constructed with accommodation for the stationmaster, alongside a ticket office, ladies’ waiting room, and gentlemen’s urinals outside. In 1905 Princess Christian of Schleswig-Holstein and her daughter Helena Victoria visited Woody Bay Station on a tour of north Devon.

In March 1923 the Lynton & Barnstaple Railway was purchased by the Southern Railway. The company carried out improvements on the line and overhauled the passenger coaches in a new green livery. The Southern Railway branding continued across new signs and structures at the railway stations: at Woody Bay new platform signs and fence posts and fences, all in solid reinforced-concrete to standard Southern Railway designs, were installed. Despite this change in management, the railway soon fell out of favour with local people, and then visitors too, as improvements to roads and the popularity of the motor car ensued. Trains ran on the railway for the last time on 29 September 1935, and that November the track, locomotives, rolling stock and materials were auctioned, the viaduct abandoned, and the station buildings sold or deconstructed.

The Lynton & Barnstaple Railway Association was formed in 1979, and in 1995 it was able to purchase Woody Bay Station which, until then, had been a private house. Due to the efforts of the association, the station was officially reopened in May 2003 and the first passenger train since 1935 was run from Woody Bay to Killington Lane in July 2004. The station is the visitor hub for the heritage railway; a tea-room was constructed to its south-east in 2022 (not included in the List entry).

Details

Woody Bay Station was built in 1898 for the Lynton & Barnstaple Railway; it was possibly designed by Robert (Bob) Jones. The Lynton & Barnstaple Railway was taken over by the Southern Railway in 1923, and the line was closed in 1935. Woody Bay Station reopened as a heritage railway station in 2004.

MATERIALS: local stone with terracotta tile-hanging, terracotta tile roof, timber casements and doors.

PLAN: rectangular with shallow projecting bays to the north-east and south-east. Small extension to the west containing C19 gentlemen’s urinals, and to the east which connects to a C21 tea-room extension on the south-east side (not included in the List entry).

EXTERIOR: designed in the ‘Nuremburg style’, the station is two-storeys, with the principal platform elevation facing north. The building is constructed of random local stone brought to courses, with red-brick dressings to the ground-floor windows. The upper storey has a hipped roof of terracotta tile with terracotta ridge finials and plain ridge tiles; the eaves are brought down on the east and west sides. The roof is flanked by two chimney stacks faced with hung terracotta tiles, and with terracotta pots; below each chimney is a timber ventilation louvre under a pitched roof. The north and south elevations are faced with terracotta tile-hanging, and each has a paired timber casement. The lower storey has a pitched roof, also in terracotta tile, with deep eaves on the north side forming a canopy over the entrance and partially over the platform. The roof extends south-east over a small extension.

The principal elevation has a single entrance door and double-doors in the centre, flanked by three-light timber casements with slim mullions. The bay containing the left-hand window projects slightly forward. All doors are framed and panelled, with glazing to the upper half. The door panelling, architraves and the casement windows on the north elevation have a neat chamfer detail, and some historic glass survives.

The rear (south) elevation has double-doors (identical to and opposite those on the north side), with a three-light timber casement to the left, a single high-level casement to the left again, and a single casement to the right. The right-hand bay again projects slightly forward and contains a three-light timber casement; the roof to this bay is steeply pitched with deep eaves. To the right is a single-storey flat-roofed extension with a C20 casement window; it is connected to a C21 link to the single-storey C21 tea-room (not included in the List entry).

Attached to the west elevation of the station, and set-back from the principal elevation, is a small flat-roofed building containing the gentlemen’s urinals; concrete-block privacy-screen walls on its west side are a later addition.

INTERIOR: accessed through double-doors from the north and south, the main space on the ground floor is the former ticket-office; in the south-east corner is a C21 shop counter, above which is framing to the staircase. To the west of the ticket office is the former ladies’ waiting-room with a small room to the south. To the east of the ticket office is the former stationmaster’s office; this retains a moulded timber dado rail with anaglypta wallpaper below, and a fireplace with a late-C19 decorative cast-iron surround in the north-west corner. To the south of the office is a small lobby with a cupboard to the south, and to the west the former parlour, which again has a dado rail with wallpaper below, a moulded timber picture rail, and on the west wall an oak fire surround with chamfer detailing; a C19 cast-iron range survives. To the left of the fireplace is a tall, planked door to the staircase. The stair is straight and steep with a single turn at the top. At the west end of the first floor is a storeroom, next to which (above the former ticket office) is an office, formerly a bedroom, which retains a fireplace with a late-C19 decorative cast-iron surround on the east wall. Joinery, including matchboard panelling to the staircase, framed and chamfered-panel doors on the ground floor and simple framed and panelled doors to the first-floor rooms, survive. Finishes are C21 unless stated.

On the west side of the building, accessed externally, are late-C19 gentlemen’s urinals. A quarry-tile floor and slate-slab urinal screens on cast-iron brackets survive. A timber WC cubicle opposite is a C20 addition, and the cast-iron cisterns were acquired as part of the station’s restoration.

On the east side of the building, accessed internally through a small lobby is a modern kitchen within the late-C19 flat roofed extension; this leads to the C21 tea-room extension (not included in the List entry).

SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: on the platform to the north-east of the station building is a late-C19 signalling hut, of timber construction with a corrugated sheet-metal roof, fixed four-pane timber casements and planked double doors to the platform (its lever frame is excluded from the List entry). By the platform entrance to the south-west is a small building, concrete rendered with a monopitch roof and planked stable door. This building and the signalling hut feature in early-C20 photographs; the former has been restored having been retained in its historic position after the station’s closure, and the latter is thought to have been a stable.

This list entry was subject to a Minor Amendment on 1 October 2025 to correct a typo in the description and to reformat the text to current standards

Sources

Books and journals
Catchpole, L T, Portrait of the Lynton and Barnstaple Railway (1983),
Nicholson, T, L&B Journey from Barnstaple Town to Lynton and back on the Lynton & Barnstaple Railway (2019),
Nicholson, T, Lynton & Barnstaple Railway: Official Guide (2023),

Websites
Lynton & Barnstaple Railway, accessed 12/06/2025 from https://www.lynton-rail.co.uk/#
Lynton & Barnstaple Railway (archive site), accessed 12/06/2025 from https://www.lynton-rail.org.uk/
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: Sir George Newnes , accessed 12/06/2025 from https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/35218
Heritage Gateway: Exmoor National Park Historic Environment Record, accessed 12/06/2025 from https://www.heritagegateway.org.uk/Gateway/Results_Single.aspx?uid=MDE11177&resourceID=1022

Other
‘Lynton & Barnstaple Railway: The formal opening’ in Devon and Exeter Gazette, May 12 1898, p6

End of official list entry