Lapworth is a small station on the Chiltern main line between Dorridge and Hatton.
Information
Type:
National Rail
(Chiltern Main Line)
Station code:
LPW
Opened:
1854
Platforms:
2
The station was opened as Kingswood by the GWR (the station is actually in the village of Kingswood, Lapworth is another nearby village) but the name was changed to Lapworth in 1902 [1] to avoid confusion with another Kingswood in Surrey.
As well as being on the GWR's Oxford & Birmingham line Lapworth was originally the terminus of a branch line to Henley-in-Arden which closed in the First World War [2] (though there were plans to re-open it in the Second World War to carry munition trains, some track was relaid [3]). The Birmingham platform was originally an island platform and the now unused platform edge can still be seen through the railings as well as traces of the old trackbed. The footbridge still crosses where the two extra lines used to be. During the 1920s as many as ten or eleven men worked at the station. As with many stations Lapworth used to have a goods yard but these have now gone along with all buildings apart from a couple of "bus shelters".
Nowadays Lapworth is a sleepy unmanned station with trains every two hours stopping between Birmingham and Leamington Spa (some extra services stop in peak times and to Stratford-upon-Avon, and some London Marylebone bound services stop at weekends). Interestingly the station's Permit to Travel machine still carries Network South East branding.
Chiltern 165 019 departs on a Leamington Spa service
Platform shelter
NSE branded Permit to travel machine
Footbridge
Remains of the former bay platform
A Chiltern service prepares to depart
[1] Vic Mitchell & Keith Smith, Banbury to Birmingham (Middleton Press, 2004) Map. XVI [2] Vic Mitchell & Keith Smith, Stratford-upon-Avon to Birmingham (Moor Street) (Middleton Press, 2006) p. 3 [3] Colin G Maggs, The Branch Lines of Warwickshire (Amberley, 2011) p. 152
