There were two stations in Marlborough there was what they called the High Level which was up top of Cherry Orchard and the low level which would have been just off the Salisbury Road where Kennet Council have got their yard now, and the high level station was used mostly for goods, things that needed to be delivered in the town, and they had two vans that used to take the goods round the town and around the different villages. And also the low level station, they used to load the horses from the stables. I can remember them walking in the horses from Martin Downs when I was a kid coming down Barn Street and from Ogbourne, and they’d load them up on the station to take them to the races.
The Marlborough Donkey they used to call it when that used to go from Marlborough to Swindon, it used to bring people into work before buses. All the little villages people could get on their little halts and come into Marlborough. You could get to London, change at Savernake, biggest junction there, long, long since gone, transfer there and get to London Paddington from Marlborough in two hours, you can’t get there much quicker now by car.
Of course there was accommodation for the signalman and the stationmaster which was just off the Salisbury Road on a high bank, quite a big semi-detached house, and you could walk from the low level station up to the high level station, there was a pathway going up through.
Marlborough Zone, there was a special train for Marlborough people and we used to go to the sea for the day and it was lovely.
Some of the bigger circuses came and the animals would come by railroad rather than road, and I can well remember the parade they used to have from the station to the circus site, they would have a band to lead them to the big top ground where there would be the menagerie set up and I have got a picture I can remember taking of Robert brothers’ elephants coming down Salisbury road years and years ago and going to a site in Elcot Lane somewhere and all these elephants nose to tail.
There was a signal box that was just off the main platform, I think they had two signalmen that they had there, they used to do shifts. There was a chap whose name was Noah Trotman and he was a ganger. The booking hall for the high level station, they turned it into accommodation and he lived there for some years, and they called it Noah’s Ark.