"_We may perceive plenty of wrong turns taken at cross roads, time
misused or wasted, gold taken for dross and dross for gold, manful
effort mis-directed, facts misread, men misjudged_. _And yet those
who have felt life no stage play, but a hard campaign with some lost
battles, may still resist all spirit of general insurgence in the
evening of their day_."--VISCOUNT MORLEY OF BLACKBURN.
Though one or two earlier bubbles, blown by eager railway promoters, had
burst almost as they left the bowl of the pipe, the issue of the
prospectus of the Montgomeryshire Railways Company, in 1852, not
unnaturally inspired new hope in the border counties of some extension of
already projected lines in the locality. At Oswestry, in particular,
there was a rapidly growing feeling that such a development was overdue,
and they looked with eager eyes towards the possibility of forging a
connecting link with the system growing up in the heart of Powysland.
The Shrewsbury and Chester Railway, soon to become part of the Great
Western, had opened its branch to the busy Shropshire market centre under
the hills at the beginning of 1849,--the year which saw the birth of the
Oswestry Market and of the "Oswestry Advertizer," which, in its earlier
years, was to devote so many pages to the record of the making of the
Cambrian. But beyond Oswestry travellers had to proceed by coach. The
"Royal Oak," leaving the town daily at one o'clock, arrived at Newtown
about five. Goods were carried by more ponderous road transport, and it
is rather astonishing to recal that as late as 1853 dogs were employed as
draught animals, and local records include the circumstance of the death
of a "respected tradesman" by a fall from his horse, caused by the
animal's "fright at one of the carts drawn by the dogs, which are much
too often seen on the roads in this neighbourhood." Legislation was soon
to prohibit this custom, and railways to make it unnecessary.
[Picture: Some early Chairmen: reading from top left to bottom, The late
EARL VANE (afterwards Marquis Of Londonderry). Chairman of the Newtown
and Machynlleth railway Co. and first Chairman of the Consolidated
Cambrian Rys. Co., 1864-1884; The late MR. W. ORMSBY-GORE, First Chairman
of the Oswestry and Newtown Railway Co.; The late SIR W. W. WYNN, BART.,
Second Chairman of the Oswestry and Newtown Railway Co.]
It was, then, in an Oswestry of very different social habits to those of
to-day that, on June 23rd, 1853, the townspeople assembled at the call of
the Mayor, Mr. William Hodges, to consider the question of a possible
extension of the "Montgomeryshire Railway," in their direction, which was
declared by resolution to be the "only scheme before Parliament capable
of effecting this most desirable object."
But railways are not built by resolution alone, or the whole countryside
would soon have become heavy with steam. As a matter of fact, it soon
was, but not the sort of steam which drives locomotives or urges on the
progress of practical railway construction. Ever since 1844, reliance
had been placed in the possibility of assistance from one or both of the
great lines which already had access to the Welsh border. Hope was first
centred in the North Western, which had designs on a line from Shrewsbury
into Montgomeryshire, but, in the Oswestry area, wistful eyes turned
towards Paddington, and in propitiation of expected favours to come, four
men with Great Western interests,--Mr. W. Ormsby-Gore, who became its
first chairman; Sir Watkin, who later succeeded him in the chair; Col.
Wynn, M.P., and Mr. Rowland James Venables,--were placed on the Oswestry
and Newtown Board. The Earl of Powis, though a "North Westerner," was
found to be not without ready desire to look at things all round. He was
for a line to Shrewsbury, and also a line to Oswestry, but not to
Oswestry alone. Even the line to Oswestry, according to North Western
notions, was to be a branch either from Garthmyl or Criggion, according
to whether the Shrewsbury and Montgomeryshire line went by the Rea Valley
or by Alberbury, and that was not at all to Oswestrian taste. In the
end, however, his lordship agreed to support the Oswestry project, and to
take the value of his land,--some 10,000 pounds,--in shares, provided the
possessor of Powis Castle was allowed to nominate a director, as the
owner of Wynnstay was on the Great Western Board. The condition was
readily granted, and the Oswestry and Newtown Bill, freed from North
Western opposition, was allowed to pass. It obtained Royal Assent on
June 26th, 1855, and the first general meeting was held at Welshpool on
July 21st of that year.
Local rivalries, however, were not so easily dispelled. Welshpool's
impartiality as between the Shrewsbury and the Oswestry lines was
anathema at the latter town, where Mr. Whalley, speaking for nearly an
hour and a half, readily persuaded a great meeting to register its
insistence on the Oswestry scheme as an extension of the Llanidloes and
Newtown, and so form another link in the chain that was to bind
Manchester and Milford. Anyhow, Oswestry must be made "the initial town
and not Newtown." In support of this the local promoters looked for
substantial aid from the Great Western. But that company proved
singularly unready to render any assistance. "Not only," said Mr.
Abraham Howell, in giving evidence before Lord Stanley's Committee some
years later, "did the Great Western not aid in the capital for the
Oswestry, but they did not support the Shrewsbury. On the contrary they
opposed it with all their efforts at every step. They also, by a
manoeuvre which their position of power over the Oswestry Company and
their railway experience enabled them to carry out, succeeded in
separating the Shrewsbury from the main line, and causing it to drift
into the hands of the North Western. They, on the day of, or immediately
before the Wharncliffe meeting of the Oswestry Company, got their friends
to pay into the bankers in respect of their shares, and give their
proxies to the extent of the 0.25th in money, against the clauses in the
Shrewsbury bill, by which it was intended to connect it with the
Oswestry. By this means they cut off from the Welsh line their head and
outlet at Shrewsbury, leaving them with the Oswestry head only, to which
place they, the Great Western, alone had access, and therefore, under
their exclusive power; a result which proved highly detrimental to the
Oswestry and the Welshpool lines. During the five years from 1855 to
1859 the advantage given to the Great Western interest placed our company
practically under their control."
Small wonder that public impatience began to show signs of strain.
Cynical allusions appeared in the Press. "The only danger in making
oneself liable for new schemes," wrote one captious critic, "arises from
the possibility of their being proceeded with." Not even the "glorious
news" of the fall of Sebastopol sufficed to deflect the local mind from
the irritating habits of a dilatory directorate. After all, the Crimea
was a long way off,--much further than Chirk,--to which place, the Great
Western Company, on taking over the Shrewsbury and Chester line, had,
under the profession of "revising" the fares, substantially raised them.
This habit is one to which the community has become more accustomed in
recent years, but that was a first experience of the ways of powerful
monopolists, and it effectively emphasised the contention that it was
high time "an independent" railway company, more directly under local
control, should materialise.
Addresses were exchanged between Oswestry and Welshpool, much after the
manner of diplomatic "Notes," some of them phrased in the spirited
language which diplomats know so well how to cloak in conventional
formulas. Occasionally even the conventional formulas were dispensed
with. Questions concerning the legality of certain assemblies were
pugnaciously raised and as pugnaciously answered. Four hours' somewhat
heated discussion at an extraordinary meeting of shareholders at
Welshpool carried matters no further than the decision that the first
sod, when it was cut, should be of Montgomeryshire soil, "but whether,"
adds a critical commentator, "at Llanymynech, Welshpool or Newtown, no
one knows." Fresh controversy arose concerning the secretaryship, to
which office Mr. Princep had been appointed by Mr. Ormsby-Gore, after a
very fleeting appearance on the kaleidoscopic scene of a Mr. Farmer, and
the old rivalry of Great Western and North Western "interests"
re-appeared in fresh form. The "Oswestry Advertizer," pointing the
warning finger at the fate of another Welsh railway which, after 25,000
pounds out of a total capital of 400,000 pounds had been raised, found
everything "swallowed up in the gulph of Chancery" under the winding-up
Acts, proclaimed,--"We are almost afraid the Oswestry and Newtown is
doomed to the same end." It certainly looked as if a true prophet was
writing that dirge!
"It is hardly possible," says Mr. Howell, "to conceive a more deplorable
state than that to which the company was reduced during this period of
five years of Great-western _regime_. Every shilling that could be
realized of the proceeds of a very superior share list was expended, debt
was accumulated, every resource was exhausted; but comparatively little
was done in the execution of the works; the company was involved in four
chancery suits, of large proportions, and a law suit, and with other
suits in prospect. It was necessary to provide 45,000 pounds in cash,
towards relieving the chairman from a personal liability of 75,000
pounds, and to let free the action of the company from the chancery
suits; also further sums to discharge the claims of the contractors and
carry on the works." So moribund, indeed, did the whole affair seem,
that the North Western, treating it as practically extinct, began to
consider a scheme for converting the Shropshire Union Canal, already in
their hands, as a railway to Newtown!
And here were the promoters of this ill-starred project fighting amongst
themselves. One party was for keeping back the line from Oswestry till,
as a newspaper writer put it, "a rival to Shrewsbury is brought into
condition to do it damage." Another was for complicating it with other
new schemes. One of the sternest of all controversies still raged round
the moot point whether the line was to run from Oswestry to Newtown or
from Newtown to Oswestry, and even private friends fell out as to the
exact spot on the proposed route at which the actual work should begin!
"Discord triumphs--local prejudice is rampart--personal ill-will
abounds--as a necessary consequence no one will apply for the
unappropriated shares. Dissolution alone is imminent," cries the
distracted editor.
It was certainly becoming apparent that this was no time for further
dallying. The Shrewsbury and Welshpool undertaking, it was reported, was
enlisting "an amount of public interest and support seldom equalled in
the history of railways," and early in 1856 the directors of the Oswestry
and Newtown line found it expedient to assure the community that
"preparations for letting the contract were in active progress" and the
first sod was to be cut on April 11th. Alas for the optimism of eager
pioneers and the credulity of an impatient public! April 11th came and
proved nothing else than a slightly belated "All Fools Day"! No sod was
cut. Not a spade or a barrow was visible, and the operation might, by
all appearances be postponed till the Greek Kalends. Patience, already
sorely tried, became utterly exhausted. In June the Shrewsbury and
Welshpool Railway Bill was read a third time in the House of Commons, and
thus the rival scheme loomed still larger upon the horizon. Men had yet
to learn that railways could be co-operative as well as competitive.
But so fully, indeed, was the popular mind at that time obsessed with the
rivalry of routes that a rumour was started imputing to the directors of
the Oswestry and Newtown Company the intention of "disuniting the line
between Oswestry and Welshpool." As if there were not disunion enough
already! More genial humorists launched the story that the Prince of
Wales was coming down expressly to cut the first sod and had ordered a
new pair of "navvys" for the occasion to be made by a Welshpool
bootmaker. Feeling, however, was rising again, which was not moderated
by the apologia of the directorate suggestive that it was all due to
differences between them and the engineers. The engineers themselves
were more or less at variance, and, in April 1856, Mr. Barlow, the chief,
finding it impossible to agree with his assistant, Mr. Piercy, resigned.
Matters had come to so critical a juncture that eventually, by some happy
inspiration, a "committee of investigation" was appointed to examine "the
affairs, position and financial state of the Company." The Rev. C. T. C.
Luxmoore was elected to preside at this inquiry with Mr. Peploe
Cartwright of Oswestry as his deputy, and they issued a voluminous report
containing a series of recommendations, of which one of the most
interesting is that, to reduce expenditure, the earthworks should be
limited to a single line, "in all other respects making preparations for
a double line." That, as travellers over the Cambrian to-day are aware,
save for the length between Oswestry and Llanymynech, and between
Buttington and Welshpool on the Oswestry and Newtown section, was
eventually the course adopted. Bridges, including those over the Vyrnwy
at Llanymynech, and the Severn at Pool Quay, were built with an extra
span for a second pair of rails, but the girders still remain without
further completion. The directors did not escape pointed reference to
their "heavy responsibilities," but there was at least the "consolitary
fact" that, despite enormous expenditure already incurred, "provided the
arrears of deposit, calls and interest are paid up, a sum of 60,000
pounds over and above the Parliamentary deposit of 18,000 pounds invested
in the hands of the Accountant-General, will be at once available for the
works, an amount little short of sufficient to form half the line," and
the shareholders are urged, "manfully confronting the difficulties that
present themselves" to "merge all local jealousies and differences of
opinion, in a hearty and unanimous effort to carry out the works."
It is a long and tortuous story and well may a journalist of those days,
bemoan the perplexity of the local historian "when he turns over the
files of the various newspapers, to see in one number the praises of
certain gentlemen sung by admiring editors and enthusiastic
correspondents, and in the next frantic outbursts from distracted
shareholders against the devoted heads of the same gentlemen, who, but
one short week before were the admired of all the shareholding admirers.
One week he would find a noble lord wafted to the skies on the breath of
a public meeting, but in the next 'the breath thus vainly spent' would
blow his lordship up in a very different fashion, and those whose cheers
had wafted my lord to that elevated position, would fain keep him there,
so that sublunary affairs as far as regarded railways, would be out of
his reach. Then he would find another gentleman on the directory, one
day the idol and leading speaker of every meeting, called on the next a
'strife-engendering-judge,' and his place filled by another on the board.
Presto! and this same gentleman, again turns up trumps! A professional
gentleman is the pet of the whole company, but speedily a woe is
pronounced upon lawyers. Again the wheel turns round, and the
solicitor's great exertions and painstaking attention to the interests of
the line are acknowledged." {34}
"Our historian would next discover 'much talkee' (as John Chinaman would
say) anent a certain, or rather uncertain, 'blighting influence' which
arrested the progress of some of the works, and to get to the bottom of
which a 'committee of investigation' was appointed. He would open his
eyes when he saw the revelations made by that committee, and would wonder
how in the name of fortune--or misfortune--the shareholders could be such
'geese' (to apply a term used by one of the best directors the line ever
had) as to allow affairs to go on as they had done. He would find that
committee triumphant in the praises of the people, but snubbed by another
committee who conducted the ceremony of cutting a first sod that would
not have been cut this century but for them. When the investigation
committee's work was ended (but not finished!) he would find rival
claimants for honour:--Mr. Soandso here, Mr. Whatshisname there, and
other gentlemen elsewhere discovering that they were the 'saviours of the
line'--'unravellers of the mystery' while the line was yet in jeopardy,
and the mystery as dark as Erebus. He would then go on to disputes with
contractors and engineers, a law suit commenced here, and threatened
there,--directors retiring, and shareholders well-nigh at their wits end.
Lawyers are again at a 'Premium' and three are appointed to lay their
heads together in order to make heads of agreement, for the guidance of
new contractors, while the old ones, who the shareholders were afraid
would sack the company, were themselves sacked!"
That, indeed, is the usual fate of those who attempt to follow dead
controversies through their never-ending labyrinths. A sentimental
historian has said that "the world is full of the odour of faded
violets"; but, in looking back over these yellow pages of the past, the
scent which greets us is sometimes hardly as fragrant; and were it not
for purposes of comprehensive record, many of these acrid, but not
unamusing, incidents might be decently left buried in oblivion. Happily,
however, even the battle of the Oswestry and Newtown Railway was not
eternal. The day dawned on which it was gleefully acclaimed that the
directors had at length "caught the spirit of promptitude from the
committee" and before long "it might be expected to see hundreds of
navvies engaged in cutting up the earth." Storm clouds might re-gather
later, as we shall see, but for the time being peace was restored.
Differences as to policy and even as to the site of the sod cutting were
sufficiently composed by the summer of 1857 to admit of a start being
made with the work of construction, and on Tuesday, August 4th, the
initial ceremony, performed by Lady Williams Wynn, took place, in a field
on the east side and adjoining the bowling green at Welshpool. The spot
bears no mark to-day, as it might well do, but it may be mentioned that
it is between the rails on the down line, as you enter Welshpool station
from Buttington, just opposite the signal box. There were, needless to
say, great public rejoicings. The long delay in getting to the actual
stage of operations gave additional zest to the popular acclaim when that
point had, at last, been really reached, and the proceedings were of the
most effective and striking character. Crowds flocked in from all sides.
Montgomery shared fully in the popular acclamation, and only Oswestry,
among the interested towns, stood somewhat aloof. The question of
"priority," apparently, still rankled, and "some misunderstanding" spoilt
the effect of what was intended to be a general business holiday. "Only
two or three shops were closed, while the others remained open as usual,"
and some of the more prominent Oswestry shareholders were conspicuous by
their absence at the ceremony, at which no reference was made to the
expediting influence of the "committee of investigation."
[Picture: Sod cutting ceremony of the Oswestry and Newtown Railway, at
Welshpool, on August 4th, 1857]
But in Welshpool the streets were bright with bunting. At noon shops
were closed in order that everyone might participate in the ceremonial.
Bells pealed from the Church tower; cannon, "captured at Seringapatam by
the great Lord Clive" were fired from Powys Castle, and a committee,
headed by the Mayor (Mr. Owen, grandfather of Mr. Robert Owen of Broad
Street), who had taken an active interest in the promotion of both the
Oswestry and Shrewsbury lines, assisted by the Town Clerk, carried the
day's programme through in triumph, which included the inevitable
"procession."
A contemporary record may here supply us with the necessary
details:--"The Procession began to form in the Powis Castle Park. After
some little delay it proceeded towards the Bowling Green, in the
following order:--
Two Marshals, on Horseback.
A body of the Montgomeryshire Yeomanry Cavalry dismounted.
The Band.
The Mayor and High Sheriff.
Aldermen and Town Councillors of the Borough of Welshpool.
The wheel-barrow to be used by Lady Williams Wynn, in performing the
ceremony.
The Directors of the Company.
The Officials.
Shareholders and Well-wishers.
Band of the Royal Montgomeryshire Rifles.
School Children,--including the National School, Infant Girl and Boys'
School and others.
Flags.
The First Friendly Society.
Flags and Banners.
The Second Friendly Society.
Flags and Banners.
Third Friendly Society.
Flags and Banners.
Cambrian Friendly Society.
Flags and Banners.
A small body of the Royal Montgomeryshire Rifles.
"This possession extended to a very considerable length, and was followed
by an immense concourse of pleasure-seekers and others who had come to
the town for the purpose of witnessing the ceremony.
"The body of Yeomanry Cavalry were selected by Sergeant-Major Turner, as
a body-guard for Lady Wynn during the ceremony, and being in full dress
presented a very creditable appearance.
THE CEREMONY.
"At about one o'clock the procession arrived at the spot where the
ceremony was to be performed. This, we have stated before, was on the
east side of the Bowling Green, on the part of the mound on that side of
the green facing the spot, seats were placed which were occupied by
anxious and eager spectators.
"After the procession had been properly arranged around the spot, the
ceremony was at once proceeded with," not the least impressive item in it
being the solemn invocation by Archdeacon Clive that "God would bless the
undertaking in the name of His Son Jesus Christ." The Mayor then
presented Lady Wynn with a copy of the programme of the day's proceedings
printed in gold letters on blue silk; Mrs. Owen of Glansevern read a
learned address dipping deep in the classical history of transport, "the
first sod was then cut by Lady Wynn, with the silver spade placed in the
wheelbarrow provided by the contractor, and wheeled by her along the
planks laid on the ground, in a very graceful manner. Her ladyship
performed the ceremony amidst the deafening applause of the assembled
multitude. Afterwards other ladies and gentlemen, including the
directors, contractors, engineers, etc., went through the same ceremony,
using a common wheelbarrow.
"The wheelbarrow, made of mahogany, was emblazoned with the seal of the
company, while on the silver spade was engraved the following:--
"Presented to Lady Watkin Williams Wynn, by the Contractor of the
Oswestry and Newtown Railway, on the occasion of turning the first
sod, at Welchpool, on Tuesday, the 4th of August, 1857."
"Under the inscription was a copy of the seal of the company."
Subsequently a "cold collation" was provided in a tent on the Bowling
Green; there was a prolific toasting of everybody, or nearly everybody
concerned, and what was felt to be one of the most auspicious days in the
annals of Powysland closed with rural sports and dancing. That night the
shareholders dreamt of prodigious dividends.