Arley Station with its open, public space can offer both passengers and visitors alike the chance to sit and picnic, or to just simply relax in a pleasant, ‘unhurried’ and idyllic corner of North Worcestershire. From its high vantage point, our beautifully restored 1860’s station buildings and gardens provide a fantastic backdrop to the picturesque village of Upper Arley set beside the River Severn. Recreating the romance and nostalgia of a by-gone era, Arley Station is fortunate to have an extensive area of garden and is an ideal spot to watch the World go by (some fantastic steam locomotives just happen to pass through the station too!).

Good ‘P.R.’ isn’t something new, a fact that all the old railway companies understood, realising that well maintained stations and perhaps an attractive garden projected a positive image to the travelling public. It’s well-documented that at GWR stations in particular, staff shared a common bond of sense and duty, taking great pride in ensuring that ‘their’ station and grounds were well turned-out, with often great rivalry existing between neighbouring stations.

Well aware that this ‘rivalry’ could be put to good use, the majority of the old railway companies awarded ‘prizes’ for the ‘Best Turned Out’ or ‘Best Maintained Station and Gardens’.  
 

Such exercises meant that buildings as a whole were not only well maintained, it also ensured that hands were not idle during the gaps between service trains, which on certain branch lines at least could be quite extensive, “method in their madness somewhere”.

Photographic evidence of the station grounds at Arley around the beginning of the last Century suggests that apart from some floral display beds along the edge of the ‘down’ platform, there was little more than field meadow to deal with behind the picket fencing. There is an indication of an ‘obligatory’ station vegetable patch at the far end of the platform, although certainly nothing of the wooded area that exists today.