Abergavenny Station
Region:
Red Wheel Site:
Transport Mode(s):
Address:
Postcode:
Visitor Centre:
Website:
Visit website
This handsome station, on the line from Newport to Shrewsbury, was built in 1854 for the Newport, Abergavenny & Hereford Railway, which later became part of the GWR. It is a handsome mildly Italianate two storey villa and survives virtually intact. Designed by Charles Liddell, Engineer to the Newport, Abergavenny & Hereford Railway, it is a Grade II Listed Building.
Abergavenny subsequently became a railway town, as in 1862 a line was opened from Abergavenny Junction, north of the present station, to Brynmawr by the Merthyr, Tredegar & Abergavenny Railway. It was built to move coal to the Midlands and north of England. The line became part of the LNWR and then the LMS. Nothing remains of the Junction station, though there is a viaduct still standing over Tredillon Lane and there are rows of LNWR cottages off Grosvenor road. At Brecon Road, the third station in the town and intermediate on the line to Brynmawr, there are a few remains such as abutments and an approach road which now leads to a surgery. Behind a BP garage in Brecon Road there are still to be found an engine shed and the Engineer South Wales workshops. From Merthyr Road can be seen the abutments and remains of the piers of the Usk Bridge. The railway was such an important employer in Abergavenny that there remain many railway houses in streets such as Chapel Road, Union Road and Stanhope Street.
This line can still be traced on its dramatic route up the Clydach Gorge to Brynmawr and is accessible on foot.
By road: Off A465 and A40 on Station Road on the east side of the town. Other remains in the town are close to the Brecon Road. Access to the line up the Clydach Gorge is from the A465 Heads of the Valleys road.
Atterbury, Paul, Along Lost Lines, David & Charles, ISBN-10: 071532568X (2007)
Barrie, D. S. M. & Baughan, Peter, A Regional History of the Railways of Britain: South Wales, Atlantic Transport Publishers, ISBN-10: 0946537690 (1994)
Biddle, Gordon, Britain's Historic Railway Buildings, Oxford University Press, ISBN-10: 0198662475 (2003)
Biddle, Gordon & Nock, O. S. The Railway Heritage of Britain : 150 years of railway architecture and engineering, Studio Editions, ISBN-10: 1851705953 (1990)
Jones, G. B. & Dunstone, D., The Origins of the LMS in South Wales, Gomer. ISBN-1 85902 676 1(1999)
Jones, G. B. & Dunstone, D., The Vale of Neath Line, Gomer. ISBN-1 85902 446 7 (1999)
Wolmar, Christian, Fire and Steam: A New History of the Railways in Britain, Atlantic Books, ISBN-10: 1843546 (2008)