There is now nothing at the site to suggest it was once a railway station
At first glance, there is little to suggest that trains once stopped here, which is a similar story to many Cambridgeshire railway stations that have come and gone over time. One in particular with an unusual story to tell, lies beneath newly laid tarmac as it is transforming into 40 new homes.
Haddenham Cambs was a single platform station which opened in April 1866 and offered three passenger trips a day, down the Ely to St Ives railway line.
The station was renamed Haddenham Cambs in 1923 to avoid confusion with with Great Western’s Haddenham station and was open for passenger journeys until 1931. The line was used by fruit pickers and for two annual excursions to Hunstanton and Great Yarmouth until 1958.
The original station buildings have long since disappeared with the former platform area forming part of the business Anson Packaging’s office buildings in 1977. The business site closed in 2016 and in 2022, work began to transform the landscape into 40 new dwellings, a substation and associated infrastructure.
The new properties are a mixture of 40 new two-bed and three-bed affordable rent and shared ownership properties set to be on the market for tenants in spring 2026.
A brief history of the railway line
The station was located outside the village of Haddenham next to the Station Road and Ely Way junction and was built to serve the surrounding Fenland communities.
The line was short connecting the village to the Ely and Huntingdon railway. It opened in August 1847, the same day as the Eastern Counties Railway opened its line from Cambridge to St Ives.
Despite a slow start and several failed proposals to expand the line in 1869 and 1872, an extension from Sutton to St Ives eventually opened in 1878 and connected Haddenham, Bluntisham and Earith Bridge increasing services to five trains a day.
Charles Howard spent 39 years of his service with the Great Eastern Railway Company at Haddenham station. He said: “When I came to Haddenham in 1887 the platform was only about two bricks high. I had that altered so that people could conveniently step into the carriages, as they would be able to do at any other station.”
“In those days we had a brick siding to cope with the tremendous brick trade which was done by Mr Jewson’s firm”.
Passenger numbers were modest as residents showed little enthusiasm for the rural station’s walking distance from the village and prohibitive fares. Freight traffic for transporting local products from the nearby goods sheds, coal yards and adjacent clay pit remained healthy over the years.
Mr. Howard spoke on the fruit growing industry in the area and said that in those days the gooseberry was the principal fruit grown. People across the community went in for growing all kinds of fruit and large quantities that were dispatched by rail
Prior to Mr Howard there had only been one other station master, Mr Jacobs, who was there for 21 years.
Following the First World War and the arrival of local bus services in 1922, there was a rapid decline in passenger numbers which came secondary to freight traffic transporting goods.The railway was absorbed into the London & North Eastern Railway (LNER) the same year, becoming a part of the wider train network as it is known today.
Passenger services on the line were withdrawn in February 1931. Despite this, the station continued to see occasional use for special trains carrying seasonal fruit pickers who came to the area to help with harvest work. The branch was the busiest with transporting goods such as milk, sugar beet, livestock and agricultural produce.
After the Second World War, most of this traffic gradually shifted to road transport and only two annual excursion trains to the seaside resorts of Hunstanton and Great Yarmouth also called at the station until October 1958.
Within the same year the tracks were lifted, and much of the former railway route was returned to farmland or reused as access roads across the surrounding fenlands.
The land was occupied in 1977 by Ansom packaging who were a leading supplier for the plastic packaging of Marks & Spencer produce. The business built a £1.5 million production space incorporating the former station house into its infrastructure.
The company remained on the site of the old railway station until its merger with the Danish firm Faerch in 2015 and moved to a new facility headquarters at Lancaster Way Business Park, Ely.
Today, little evidence remains of Haddenham’s once busy rural station but with the land once again redeveloped, the site enters a new refreshed chapter in its long history yet to be made.
