Woodford Railway
The Arrival Part 2
The first official notice that the proposed railway would take a definite route, would be when local landowners received a notice, dated the 1st December, 1890, from the railway company, informing them that application was being made to Parliament for powers to extend the railway to London and that they proposed acquiring certain lands from them.
A form was enclosed, which they were asked to fill in and return, to say whether or not they would agree to this being done. One of these notices has survived, and is to be found in the scrapbook compiled by Mrs. Ruth Thomas in 1956. It was addressed to Mr. John Bird, who lived at the bottom of Scrivens Hill and it informed him that the railway company proposed to acquire his cottage, the garden and the outbuildings. However, the first application made to Parliament was thrown out and in 1891 an amended Bill was submitted and passed by Parliament in 1892, receiving Royal Assent in 1893.
The first known of this locally would be from a notice in the Northampton Daily Chronicle of 25th November 1891 which said, that the Railway Company was making an application to the next session of Parliament for powers to build a railway and listing the parishes through which it would pass, Woodford cum Membris was named as one of the parishes.
