A photographic print of Home & Housing, Pre War Only, Housing - Slums - Rural Only

FAMILY LIVES 14 YEARS IN A STATION BY A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT MRS. COLE lives on the up platform. Mrs. Chilbrook shares the down. Mrs. Cole's flat includes the General Waiting Room. Mrs. Chilbrook and her neighbour have the Ladies' First-Class Waiting Room, the Stationmaster's Office and the Porter's Room. And Mrs. Chilbrook says that she wouldn't go back to live in a street if she had the chance. It is nearly thirty years since the L.N.E.R. closed that stretch of Essex railway line, between Edmonton and Cheshunt to passenger traffic. During that time only one goods train a day has run past its three stations, Churchbury, Forty Hill, and Theobald's Grove. Fourteen years ago Mrs. Chilbrook took up residence on Forty Hill station platform. Her husband and Mrs. Cole's husband are railway workers. Why waste good waiting-rooms when a lick of paint and a few fittings will make them as good as any flat? They have done the same at Theobald's Grove station, where offices and waiting-rooms house three families. But Forty Hill looks more homely. Mrs. Cole has seen to that. She came there a year ago, and Margaret Cole, then two, was apt to wander on to the line. So Margaret and her smaller brother, with their wire netting "pen" on the platform, now have an all-weather open-air playground. And the washing dries nicely in the breeze that blows up and down the empty railway line. And if anybody else would like to live at a railway station there are five from which to choose down in Devon. For to-day the Southern Railway is selling by auction the five stations on the old Lynton and Barnstaple Railway, which was closed three years ago. The five stations, which are being offered freehold, complete with platforms and waiting-rooms, are Lynton, Woody Bay, Blackmoor Gate, Bratton Fleming and Chelfham. SAYER 5.10.1938 THE STATION IS NOW A DWELLING. O.P.S. Mrs. Cole hanging up her washing on the platform which was once known as FORTY HILL STATION, ENFIELD. (See Mr. Austin for story).