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Hellingly Hospital Railway

Closed railway lines in South East EnglandElectric railways in the United KingdomHistory of mental health in the United KingdomHospital railways in the United KingdomRail trails in England
Rail transport in East SussexRailway lines closed in 1959Railway lines opened in 1903Standard gauge railways in EnglandUse British English from March 2018
Hellingly Railway 1906
Hellingly Railway 1906

The Hellingly Hospital Railway was a light railway owned and operated by East Sussex County Council, used for transporting coal and passengers to Hellingly Hospital, a psychiatric hospital near Hailsham, from the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway's Cuckoo Line at Hellingly railway station. The railway was constructed in 1899 and opened to passengers on 20 July 1903, following its electrification in 1902. After the railway grouping of 1923, passenger numbers declined so significantly that the hospital authorities no longer considered passenger usage of the line to be economical, and that service was withdrawn in 1931. The railway closed to freight in 1959, following the hospital's decision to convert its coal boilers to oil, which rendered the railway unnecessary. The route took a mostly direct path from a junction immediately south of Hellingly Station, past Farm and Park House Sidings, stopping places to load and unload produce and supplies from outbuildings of the hospital. Much of the railway has been converted to footpath, and many of the buildings formerly served by the line are now abandoned.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Hellingly Hospital Railway (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Hellingly Hospital Railway
Kiln Close, Wealden Hellingly

Geographical coordinates (GPS) Address Nearby Places
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Wikipedia: Hellingly Hospital RailwayContinue reading on Wikipedia

Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 50.887777777778 ° E 0.26027777777778 °
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Address

Kiln Close

Kiln Close
BN27 4EJ Wealden, Hellingly
England, United Kingdom
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Hellingly Railway 1906
Hellingly Railway 1906
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Nearby Places

St Wilfrid's Church, Hailsham
St Wilfrid's Church, Hailsham

St Wilfrid's Church is a Roman Catholic church serving the town of Hailsham in the Wealden district of East Sussex, England. The present building was completed in 2015 and is the third church to serve the town; it stands between its predecessors, a small hall opened in 1922 and a larger church of 1955, on a site which had belonged to a Catholic family since the 19th century. The Hailsham area was historically supportive of Protestant Nonconformist beliefs and had few Catholics, and for many years worshippers had to attend Mass in basic premises: rooms in private houses and, from 1917, a subdivided loft in the stables of a brewery. Numbers grew rapidly after the first permanent church opened, and after six decades of being served from Our Lady of Ransom Church, Eastbourne, Hailsham became an independent parish in 1957. The town's rapid postwar growth and an increasing Catholic population prompted the construction of the larger new church. When created in 1957, Hailsham's parish covered an extensive, mostly rural area of East Sussex, and it was extended again in the early 21st century when nearby Polegate was included. The parish is now formally known as "Hailsham and Polegate" and is served by St Wilfrid's Church—at which there are two Sunday Masses each week—and St George's Church at Polegate. Both are part of the Eastbourne Deanery within the Roman Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton. Masses were also celebrated up to once a week at a chapel at Hellingly Hospital, a large psychiatric hospital within the parish, for about 50 years until the late 1980s.