Stephen Roberts considers the core 22 mile route via Fareham but also some of the connecting routes and byways.
A‘Great British railway journey’ should be a jaunt from significance to significance, with fascination in between. Here, I’ll start at Eastleigh, a true railway town since 1891 but from 29 November 1841 the site of the first major junction on what became the London & South Western Railway (L&SWR), and finish at Portsmouth, an important naval base since the late-12th century. Intermediate stops tell of radical journalist William Cobbett, the brick, a Roman fort as medieval castle, and 18th/19th century fortifications spawning a nature reserve.
Eastleigh
The railway is the raison d’être of Eastleigh, or its modern bulk anyway. There was a 10th century Anglo-Saxon village of ‘East Leah’ mentioned in Domesday Book but little else until the London & Southampton Railway/ L&SWR arrived with its Southampton-Winchester line, the railway facilities at Eastleigh opening as ‘Bishopstoke’ (the nearest village) from 10 June 1839. Significantly, the new railway was part of the yet to be completed London and Southampton main line, its London & Southampton Railway being incorporated by Act of Parliament on 25 July 1834 and opting to rebrand itself as the L&SWR as its sphere of interest broadened to include Portsmouth. The name change was completed by Act of Parliament on 4 June 1839, so just six days before opening of the Southampton-Winchester section of line; opening from Winchester to Basingstoke completed the first main line through to Nine Elms from 11 May 1840.
After a few name changes, the station became Eastleigh in 1923, Eastleigh (the place) having been dubbed in 1868 by local authoress Charlotte Yonge (1823-1901) – Eastleigh station ‘caught up’ on the centenary of Yonge’s birth. The carriage and wagon (C&W) works arrived in 1891, transferred from Nine Elms, and the greater Eastleigh railway site was de
