Bitton Lamp Hut: a new home for our gardeners

Aim

We’re recreating Bitton’s Lamp Hut for use by our fantastic gardening team. Help us enhance our heritage and keep our station blooming.

The Lamp Hut

Unassuming but essential, the lamp hut once played a key part in the operation of Bitton Station by providing the facility to clean, trim and refill the oil lamps that shone from the signals and which bathed the platforms in pools of muted yellow light. The hut was demolished in the 1960s but, with your support, we can continue our mission to recreate the atmosphere of a 1950s British Railways station. Our volunteers will recreate the hut at the north end of the old cattle dock, just feet from where the original once stood.

How will we use the hut?

The exterior of the new lamp hut will be a faithful recreation and will be sited close to the location of the original. Internally the hut will take on a new purpose, befitting the modern operation of the station, as a storage space for tools used by the group of volunteers who maintain our award-winning gardens.

Why do our gardeners need a new home?

For some years, our gardening volunteers have used part of an old carriage alongside the dock at Bitton as a store for their tools. In the coming months, this vehicle is due to be moved to make way for exciting new displays relating to an agreement, in principle, with the Somerset and Dorset Railway Trust. These developments mean that our volunteer gardeners need a new permanent home for their equipment. By supporting this project, you will enable them to continue their excellent work and enhance our heritage environment.

How can you help?

As a charity, we rely on your kind support to progress our vision.

We need to raise £5,000 to purchase the hut, materials, undertake the necessary ground-works to complete the build and for fitting out.

It’s been a difficult period for us as a leisure attraction and we need to balance the desire to progress our projects with the need to protect our reserves as a charity. Timescales are tight; we need to move forward but cannot do so until we have the resources to enable us to proceed.

Therefore, we ask for you to pledge what you can in the knowledge that you will only honour your donation if we meet our fundraising goal by the deadline. That means we can only proceed with the project once we have enough to complete it. If the crowdfunding campaign is unsuccessful, your pledge will be refunded in full.

Any extra funds at project completion will be used for other heritage interpretation projects by the Avon Valley Railway.

Rewards

As a thank you for your support, we have produced a range of rewards for those who donate to our campaign. If you would prefer not to receive a reward, you can support us by clicking ‘donate’ instead.

Who are we?

We work to preserve the route and legacy of the Midland Railway’s Mangotsfield to Bath Branch, which terminated at the legendary Bath Green Park Station. From humble beginnings in 1972, our volunteers are returning heritage trains to the Avon Valley, with operations currently focused on Bitton Station. Visit our website or social media pages to find out more about the work of the Avon Valley Railway.

This project successfully funded on 1st October 2021