The Brill Tramway, also known as the Quainton Tramway, Wotton Tramway, Oxford & Aylesbury Tramroad and Metropolitan Railway Brill Branch, was a six-mile (10 km) rail line in the Aylesbury Vale, Buckinghamshire, England. It was privately built in 1871 by the 3rd Duke of Buckingham as a horse tram line to help transport goods between his lands around Wotton House and the national rail network. Lobbying from the nearby village of Brill led to its extension to Brill and conversion to passenger use in early 1872. Two locomotives were bought, but trains still travelled at an average speed of .
History In 1883, the Duke of Buckingham planned to upgrade the route to main line standards and extend the line to Oxford, creating the shortest route between Aylesbury and Oxford. Despite the backing of the wealthy Ferdinand de Rothschild, investors were deterred by costly tunnelling. In 1888, a cheaper scheme was proposed in which the line would be built to a lower standard and avoid tunnelling, and, in anticipation, the line was named the Oxford & Aylesbury Tramroad.
Upgrade The existing line was upgraded in 1894, but the extension to Oxford was never built. Instead, operation of the Brill Tramway was taken over by London's Metropolitan Railway and Brill became one of its two north-western termini. The line was rebuilt in 1910, and more advanced locomotives were introduced, allowing trains to run faster. The population of the area remained low, and the primary income source remained the carriage of goods to and from farms. Between 1899 and 1910, other lines were built in the area, providing more direct services to London and the north of England. The Brill Tramway went into financial decline.
In 1933, the Metropolitan Railway became the Metropolitan line of London Transport. The Brill Tramway became part of the London Underground, despite Quainton Road being from London and not underground. London Transport aimed to concentrate on electrification and improvement of passenger services in London and saw little possibility that passenger routes in Buckinghamshire could become viable. In 1935, the Brill Tramway was closed. The infrastructure was dismantled and sold. Little trace remains, other than the former junction station at Quainton Road, now the Buckinghamshire Railway Centre.
Background Brill is a small village at the top of the high Brill Hill in the Aylesbury Vale in northern Buckinghamshire, northeast of Oxford, and north-west of London. It was the only population centre in Bernwood Forest, a forest owned by English monarchs as a hunting ground. Traditionally believed to have been the home of King Lud, Brill Palace was a seat of the Mercian kings, the home of Edward the Confessor, and an occasional residence of the monarchs of England until at least the reign of Henry III (1216–1272). Brill was a centre for manufacture of pottery and bricks, but it was a long way from major roads or rivers, and separated by hills from Oxford. It remained small and isolated. In the 1861 census it had a population of 1,300.
Wotton House and the Dukes of Buckingham
Richard Plantagenet Campbell Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville, the only son of Richard Plantagenet Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville, 2nd Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, was born on 10 September 1823. By the mid-19th century the family was in financial difficulty. (subscription or UK public library membership required) The family's estates and their London home at Buckingham House (No. 91 Pall Mall) were sold and the family seat of Stowe House seized by bailiffs as security and its contents sold. Over of the family's estates were sold to meet debts.
The only property in the control of the Grenville family was the small ancestral home of Wotton House and its associated lands around Wotton Underwood near Brill. The Grenvilles looked for ways to maximise profits from their remaining farmland around Wotton, and to seek opportunities in heavy industry and engineering. Richard Plantagenet Campbell Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville (titled Marquess of Chandos following the death of his grandfather Richard Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville, 1st Duke of Buckingham and Chandos in 1839) was appointed chairman of the London and North Western Railway (LNWR) on 27 May 1857. After the death of his father on 29 July 1861 he became 3rd Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, and resigned from chairmanship of the LNWR, returning to Wotton House to manage the family's estates. His efforts to pay debts incurred by his father earned praise from Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, (subscription or UK public library membership required) and in 1875 he was appointed Governor of Madras, serving until 1880.
Early railways in the Aylesbury Vale On 15 June 1839 entrepreneur and former Member of Parliament for Buckingham, Sir Harry Verney, 2nd Baronet, opened the Aylesbury Railway. Built under the direction of Robert Stephenson, it connected the London and Birmingham Railway's Cheddington railway station on the West Coast Main Line to Aylesbury High Street railway station in eastern Aylesbury, the first station in the Aylesbury Vale. On 1 October 1863 the Wycombe Railway opened a branch from Princes Risborough railway station to Aylesbury railway station on the western side of Aylesbury, leaving Aylesbury as the terminus of two small and unconnected branch lines.
Meanwhile, north of Aylesbury the Buckinghamshire Railway was being built by Sir Harry Verney. The scheme consisted of a line running southwest to northeast from Oxford to Bletchley and a second southeast from Brackley via Buckingham to join the Oxford–Bletchley line halfway along its length. The first section opened on 1 May 1850, and the whole on 20 May 1851. The Buckinghamshire Railway intended to extend the line south to the station at Aylesbury, but the extension was not built.
On 6 August 1860 the Aylesbury and Buckingham Railway, with the 3rd Duke (then still Marquess of Chandos) as chairman and Sir Harry Verney as deputy chairman, was incorporated by Act of Parliament to connect the Buckinghamshire Railway (now operated by the LNWR) to Aylesbury. The 2nd Duke ensured the new route ran via Quainton, near his estates around Wotton, instead of a more direct route via Pitchcott. Beset by financial difficulties, the line took over eight years to build, eventually opening on 23 September 1868. The new line was connected to the Wycombe Railway's Aylesbury station, and joined the Buckinghamshire Railway where the Oxford–Bletchley line and the line to Buckingham met. A junction station was built. With no nearby town after which to name the new station, it was named Verney Junction railway station after Sir Harry. Aylesbury now had railway lines to the east, north and southwest, but no line southeast towards London and the Channel ports. Construction and early operations
With a railway near the border of Wotton House estate, the 3rd Duke decided to build a small-scale agricultural railway to connect the estate to the railway. His intended route ran on his own land other than a small stretch west of the Aylesbury and Buckingham line. This land was owned by the Winwood Charity Trust, an operator of almshouses in Quainton of which the Duke was a trustee. The Duke agreed to pay an annual rent of £12 (about £ in ), in return for permission to run trains. With the consent of the Winwood Charity the route did not require Parliamentary approval, and construction could begin immediately.
The Duke envisaged a tramway west from Quainton Road railway station across his Wotton estate. The line was intended for transport of construction materials and agricultural produce and not for passengers. It would not have a junction with the Aylesbury and Buckingham railway, but would have its own station at Quainton Road at a right angle to the A&B's line. A turntable at the end of the tramway would link to a spur from the A&B's line. The line was to run roughly southwest from Quainton Road to Wotton near Wotton Underwood. Just west of the station at Wotton the line split. One section would run west to Wood Siding near Brill. A short stub called Church Siding would run northwest into Wotton Underwood itself, terminating near the parish church, and a siding would run north to a coal siding near Kingswood. The branch to Kingswood was routed to pass a pond, to allow the horses working the line to drink.
Ralph Augustus Jones was appointed Manager of the project, and construction began on 8 September 1870. Twenty labourers from the Wotton estate who would otherwise have been unemployed following harvest were employed six days a week to build the line, each paid 11 s per week. They carried out all the construction except laying the track, which was done by the specialists, Lawford & Houghton. The line was built using the cheapest materials and winding around hills to avoid expensive earthworks. The ballast was a mix of burnt clay and ash. The stations were crude earth banks high, held in place by wooden planks. As the Duke intended that the line be worked only by horse-drawn carriages, the line was built with longitudinal sleepers to reduce the risk of horses tripping. A diameter turntable was installed at Quainton Road to link the tramway to the Aylesbury and Buckingham Railway.
Opening
On 1 April 1871, the section between Quainton Road and Wotton was formally opened by the Duke of Buckingham in a ceremony in which coal from the first goods wagon to arrive at Wotton was distributed to the poor. At its opening the line was unnamed, but it was referred to as "The Quainton Tramway" in internal correspondence. The extension from Wotton to Wood Siding was complete by 17 June 1871; the opening date of the northern branch to Kingswood is not recorded, but it was not fully open in February 1873. The London and North Western Railway began a dedicated service from Quainton Road, with three vans a week of milk collected from the Wotton estate shipped to the London terminus at Broad Street. The only passengers were estate employees and people accompanying livestock.
The Duke and Jones intended to run no more than one train on each section of the line so the line was not built with passing loops or signalling. When more than one horse-drawn train or locomotive was in operation, the Tramway operated a token system using colour-coded staffs to ensure only one train could be on a section. Drivers between Quainton Road and Wotton carried a blue staff, those west of Wotton and the Kingswood siding a red staff.
On 26 August 1871, an excursion ran from Wood Siding to London hauled by the Great Western Railway (GWR). It carried around 150 people, for a total of passenger fares (with each child counted as half an adult), and was drawn by horses between Wood Siding and Quainton Road and by locomotive from Quainton Road to Aylesbury where the carriages were attached to the 7.30 am GWR service via Princes Risborough to London, arriving at 10.00 am. The experiment was not a success. Sharp overhanging branches posed a danger to passengers and had to be cut back in the week before the excursion. The day was wet and ticket sales were lower than expected. The return from London to Quainton Road was delayed in Slough, and the excursion arrived back at Wood Siding at 2.00 am.
The surveyors designing the line had worked on the assumption that the wagons would have a load on each wheel of and had designed the line accordingly. As it turned out, the four-wheeled wagons used had an average weight of and each carried of goods, meaning this limit was regularly exceeded. The coal wagons used on the line weighed each and carried of coal, meaning a load on each wheel of .