Toddington, Gloucestershire

 

Help at hand

This AA box has appeared by the roadside a few miles from where I live. They’re a dying breed, these AA boxes, and seeing one that was new to me set me thinking about their history.

In the post-war period there were over 1,000 AA telephone boxes scattered all over the country. They were originally built to provide shelter for sentries on the staff of the Automobile Association, who could offer help and directions to passing members; they also contained telephones, from which the sentry could call for further assistance. The first boxes were installed in 1911, and by 1920, AA members were themselves issued with a key to open the boxes, from which they could call for assistance if they had broken down. Maps, a light, a fire extinguisher, and other equipment were kept in the box for members’ use.

In spite of their shortcomings for those who broke down far from a box, they proved popular. When a box was manned by a sentry, he would salute the driver of a car bearing the AA’s distinctive badge, and a camaraderie built up between sentries and members. But with the development of communications technology, the increase in vehicle reliability and other factors, the boxes fell out of use, were replaced or supplemented by more modern roadside telephones, and this whole infrastructure of members’ telephones was finally rendered superfluous by the rise and rise of the mobile phone.

There are now only 30 or so boxes, without their original telephones, remaining,* some of which are in open-air museums such as Beamish and Avoncroft. The example in my picture has been restored by the volunteers of the Gloucester and Warwickshire Steam Railway, a heritage line whose whistles I can occasionally hear from the town where I live. It was originally sited at Andoversford near Cheltenham and apparently was in seriously damaged conditioned before the heritage railway acquired it and restored it. Now it’s a welcome sight as one leaves behind the Toddington roundabout in the direction of the climb up the Cotswold escarpment at Stanway Hill, on the way to Stow-on-the-Wold. As once it would have been welcome to motorists who were lost, or in need of mechanical help, as they went their way along the local steep, curvaceous and often chilly roads.

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* A website here lists 32 survivors, of which 12 are in museums and one is at the AA headquarters at Basingstoke.

Hailes, Gloucestershire

Halting for a moment

One of the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic for our household has been a change in the way we buy our food. We have avoided large supermarkets, all of which are anyway at least 15 minutes by car from where we live, opting instead to visit small local shops within walking distance of our house or, in one case, just outside the small Cotswold town where we live. This latter is the local fruit farm, from which we’ve been buying apples and other fruit and vegetables for years, and which runs a good farm shop selling all kinds of food – meat, bread, cakes, muesli, dairy produce, ice cream, etc, etc – mostly supplied by local producers.¶ It’s a good way, I think, to support local businesses while also avoiding physical contact (I order by email and collect from an agreed place on the farm).

In celebration of all this, I thought I’d share three of the architectural sights I see on my short car journey to the farm. First, Hayles Abbey Halt, the tiny station on the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway, a heritage line that runs between Cheltenham Racecourse and Broadway (many of the trains are hauled by steam locomotives). The original station opened in 1928, allowing passengers to alight and walk the short distance up the lane to Hailes Abbey.* It was lit only by oil lamps and on each side of the track was a small corrugated iron building offering shelter for waiting passengers. The little station was closed in 1960, and British Railways closed the line in 1976. When the heritage railway took it over, they did not reopen Hayles Abbey Halt (the volunteers who run the line had work enough to do laying track, building or restoring several other stations, and caring for rolling stock, after all). So it was only in 2017 that the halt was reopened, with a new platform, a neat little corrugated iron shelter and some cast iron signs. My photograph shows a view of the halt from the nearby road bridge. The shelter is about as basic as they get – there is not even the concave-curving ‘pagoda’ roof of many of the platform buildings favoured by the Great Western. But it’s functional, and, as my regular readers know, I have a weakness for corrugated iron.

The tiny station is quiet for now. As I drive over the road bridge there’s no sign of puffs of steam, no distant railway whistle, no people arriving to look at the abbey and then perhaps take the footpaths back to Winchcombe, no waiting passengers about to get on a train and head back the easy way. It’s all very Adlestrop, with the local birds singing their hearts out to show that their voices are as loud as those of their relations over by the line that Edward Thomas celebrated in his poem – as loud and strong as all the birds of Oxfordshire, and Gloucestershire, and Warwickshire.

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¶ Hayles Fruit Farm, website here.

* This place has two spellings. The settlement is officially Hailes and this is also the spelling used by those who care for Hailes Abbey, but the railway and the fruit farm opt to use the more antiquated form, Hayles. Hence the confusion of getting off at Hayles Abbey Halt to visit Hailes Abbey.