Holmwood Station Scrapbook by Julian Womersley

It was on 1^st May 1867 that Holmwood station first opened to the public. Since then many extraordinary people have trodden its platforms – ranging from a Royal Prince about to be proclaimed King to pauper children sent from a London workhouse. Others included a Crimean War hero; self-made millionaires; gallant officers returning from the Boer War and, during the Great War, wounded officers delivered by ambulance trains. Even the German Kaiser, His Imperial Highness, Emperor Wilhelm II, once alighted at Holmwood.

Special trains came and went - bringing London society people to glittering parties in the country; taking outings to the seaside and visitors to the Crystal Palace or transporting troops to military manoeuvres on Holmwood Common. Suffragettes frequently used the station, as did the Surrey Union Hunt, who unloaded hounds and horses directly onto the platform.

To commemorate this anniversary, local writer, Julian Womersley, has produced a profusely illustrated, 150 page book called ‘A Holmwood Station Scrapbook’. Like all good scrapbooks, this is a serendipitous collection of snippets from the past: photographs, press cuttings and other ephemera are brought together to tell the saga of Holmwood railway station and its role in the social history of a developing community in deepest rural Surrey.

Priced at £12.50 and aimed at the general reader, the fresh research and new material published for the first time will also appeal to those with more specialist railway or historical interests.