Pattenden Lane Siding

Courtesy of Brian Hart. Pattenden Lane siding bye 9th June 1961 was very overgrown. Here H Class 31530 heads south towards Hawkhurst with Pattenden Bridge in the background.

I have finally reached the site of Pattenden Lane Siding which was just beyond Pattenden Bridge on the Bedgebury Road to the south of Goudhurst. There is very little to see but like Rise bridge the road rises considerably, today all views are obscured by thick vegetation.

             
                    Looking south from Goudhurst the land rises markedly at Pattenden Bridge.

A small sign on the top of the bridge says 'PWH 1502 A'.

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One of the campaigners for a railway was the Rt Hon Alexander J B Beresford Hope, a local Tory MP who seems to have owned much of the land to Hawkhurst, it took years and years to finally build the line and his resolve must have been severely tested at times, he was offered a station on his land but he wisely refused in favour of a farm siding. Pattenden Lane Siding was used for longer than Churn Lane Siding Horsmonden, so it must have been fairly successful. The site was about 1 mile down from Goudhurst Station and nearly 8 miles from Paddock Wood Station.

This is the site of Pattenden Lane Siding today, somewhere in the distance among the trees is      Pattenden Bridge.

I took a walk along the footpath to the side in the hope of seeing something (for example there had been a pile of gravel which appeared on many of the old maps for a long time) but all I saw was an old railway sleeper!

This sleeper must have been old when the line closed, it looks decrepit and is in a far worse state  than the others that I have seen.

After the farm siding the trackbed follows the right hand fork and soon veers to the south away from Goudhurst. The left fork leads to Smugley Farm.

      Taken from the trackbed, the line passed within 100 yards of Smugley Farm famous for it's smuggling history (there was supposed to be a tunnel from St Mary's Church, Goudhurst over half a mile away, please see my next posting for more on that).

   The trackbed , now a farm track, soon bent sharply and there was an accommodation crossing so drivers were obliged to slow right down and be extra vigilant, particularly during the hop picking season. The line rose quite sharply here and it is obvious to the naked eye  The gradient was 1 in 85 after the bridge, soon rising to 1 in 60.