Welsh Journals

Railways carried people and we read little about the people who travelled on the New Radnor Branch or whose lives were profoundly affected by it. Thus, a severe storm in 1874 caused the Back Brook at Kington to flood whilst the New Radnor extension was being built, and a small girl who attempted to cross the brook by a plank used by the workmen was knocked off by the wind and drowned. A few years later, in May 1877, 'an old Welshman, named Jones got his small waggon loaded and started on his way back with two horses. Having got a short distance beyond the railway bridge at Flood Gates, the train from Radnor came by and frightened the horses and he, not being able to manage them, was knocked down. The waggon passed over him, breaking his arm and thigh, also injuring him internally.' He was taken home, near Llandegley, in the horse bus of the Oxford Arms where he died soon after his arrival. Then, in August 1888 'a sad occurrence took place on the Railway a little way behind the plank bridge leading up to the Barton Meadows. Old Harrison, head moulder in the Casting House at the Foundry was strolling up the line. The 1113 Train from Radnor ran over him and cut his head off all but two little strips, also part of one of his feet. Whether by accident or suicide is not known. An Inquest having been held, the Jury brought in a verdict of accidental death which enables his widow to receive £ 100 from an Insurance Company. But many persons are of the opinion it was his own doing. He was seen sitting on the side of the Line just before the Train came.' Finally, on 24th January 1913 Mrs Dorothy Banks of Hergest Croft wrote to her parents in London. Besides including a discussion of family illness, Quiller Couch who just accepted the Cambridge Chair of Eng Lit., and her hopes that her daughter will be admitted to Girton, her old college, in 1915, she relates a recent railway experience, for all classes used this mode of transport and there had been a railway accident at Kington: 'A train of trucks had been merged with 2 or three empty ones in the middle & loaded ones before and behind, result that with the impetus from behind, the empty ones were bumped up & tipped over, completely blocking the line just on the Hereford side of Kington station. So we had to walk a 100 yards or so to our train & then climb into the carriage with the help of a luggage barrow!' The sources of this information were the Kington Times, the Skarratt Diaries, and the Banks Archives, none of which seem to have been drawn upon in The New Radnor Branch. So, in conclusion, Mr de Courtais is good on the material facts of building a country railway, and good on photographs, but very short on humanity. R. W. D. Fenn & J. B. Sinclair Kington David Lockwood, Kilvert, the Victorian, Seren Books, pp 339, £ 14. 95. David Lockwood is well known to the Radnorshire Society as one of its members, President of the Kilvert Society, and as a retired clergymen. He has also contributed a paper to this volume of our Transactions, so it is a particular pleasure that after his introductory biography of Francis Kilvert, published in 1990, we should now have this new selection from Kilvert's Diaries. And it is a new selection so