Burton Latimer Station House - Their Station in Life
Living in a house where trains regularly run by the window may not be everybody’s idea of fun.
But passenger trains passing the Station House at Burton Latimer make less noise than you would think, and are hardly noticeable when you are inside with the double-glazed windows closed.
Quiet life – John outside his home
by the railway line.
The noise doesn’t worry them. As John said: “At the end of the day, it’s a station and you have to have trains, but although it’s different it’s still very much a home. It’s better than having noisy neighbours.”
At one time, many more trains passed by. After three years at the house, John says he still doesn’t know when the trains run.
Station House may be near the railway line, not far from the A14 and close to Weetabix and Burton Latimer, but it is amazingly rural and peaceful. In fact, from the garden of nearly an acre it wouldn’t take much imagination to picture The Railway Children waving at the trains.
When steam trains run on the line, trainspotters envy the family their perfect view.
A dinosaur? John did a swap to get the figure which looks like it belongs outside a roadside restaurant. Other wildlife includes foxes, rabbits and muntjac deer.
Isham and Burton Station, as it was then called, closed to passengers on November 2nd ,1950 and to freight in July 1964.
There were once 76 stations in Northamptonshire, but Dr Beeching’s axe fell. Today there are only five.
Inside the house there are high ceilings, solid wooden floorboards and original fireplaces in every room except the 29ft lounge.
There an arched Gothic-style window – once the front door to the waiting room and booking hall -dominates the room.
Rooms include a lounge, living room, dining room, bathroom, kitchen, long hallway, lobby and three bedrooms.
Among the other features are a pretty little lobby with fire bell, an old range-style stove in the dining room, an attractive curved staircase and a tiny gothic window at the top of the stairs.
When John has finished his work at the home, the floors will all be polished, the doors stripped and the bathroom will have a Victorian suite complete with cast iron roll-top bath.
But the family plan to move on and have their eye on a water mill, with working wheel, in Cornwall.
John has created an impressive lounge.
Editor’s note: One former station worker at Burton Latimer recalls how the station was a lifeline for the villagers. Click below to read his memories.
By 1957 the station had become derelict and no-one wanted to claim it. Click below for the newspaper article.
