Hellingly Hospital Railway
The Hellingly Hospital Railway was a light railway owned and operated by East Sussex County Council, used for transporting coal and passengers to Hellingly Hospital, a psychiatric hospital near Hailsham, from the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway's Cuckoo Line at Hellingly railway station.
The railway was constructed in 1899 and opened to passengers on 20 July 1903, following its electrification in 1902. After the railway grouping of 1923, passenger numbers declined so significantly that the hospital authorities no longer considered passenger usage of the line to be economical, and that service was withdrawn. The railway closed to freight in 1959, following the hospital's decision to convert its coal boilers to oil, which rendered the railway unnecessary.
The route took a mostly direct path from a junction immediately south of Hellingly Station, past Farm and Park House Sidings, stopping places to load and unload produce and supplies from outbuildings of the hospital. Much of the railway has been converted to footpath, and many of the buildings formerly served by the line are now abandoned.
In 1897, East Sussex County Council purchased 400 acres (160 ha) of land at Park Farm, about three miles (5 km) north of Hailsham, from the Earl of Chichester, to be the site of a new county lunatic asylum that became Hellingly Hospital. Construction work on the hospital began in 1900, to the design of George Thomas Hine, who had designed the nearby Haywards Heath Asylum. Building materials were transported to the site by a 1 1⁄4 mile (2 km) standard gauge private siding from the goods yard at Hellingly railway station on the Cuckoo Line. The connection was built by the asylum's builders, Joseph Howe & Company, and was authorised by the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway (LBSCR) on condition that East Sussex Council paid the cost, estimated at £1,700.
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