Why Wolverton?
Wolverton Station wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for the shortsightedness of business and civic interests in Northampton in the 1830s. Keen to protect the stage coaching trade they won a court battle to prevent the town being a key destination on the new London to Birmingham railway line. As a result London & Birmingham Railway Directors had to make changes. They settled on the greenfield site of Wolverton, a mid-way point between the two cities, (and a place with useful road and canal links to transport heavy building materials) as the site for a station and engine depot. The Times of May 29th 1844 told the story:
“They [The Directors] saw that if they lost some facilities by placing their station remote from a town, they would gain by the increased steadiness and regularity of their workpeople. Accordingly, Wolverton, a healthy spot, many miles from any place of public resort, was selected as a site for a large station, and there, as we said before, the Company have founded a colony of engineers, which is rapidly flourishing while Northampton is going to decay.”
“They [The Directors] saw that if they lost some facilities by placing their station remote from a town, they would gain by the increased steadiness and regularity of their workpeople. Accordingly, Wolverton, a healthy spot, many miles from any place of public resort, was selected as a site for a large station, and there, as we said before, the Company have founded a colony of engineers, which is rapidly flourishing while Northampton is going to decay.”