Ventnor West railway station was opened on 1 June 1900 as the final addition to the railway network on the Isle of Wight. It was originally opened as Ventnor Town but the station was renamed in 1923 by the Southern Railway

Southern Railway (Great Britain)

The Southern Railway was a British railway company established in the 1923 Grouping. It linked London with the Channel ports, South West England, South coast resorts and Kent...

.

Location

The station built on the former stables of the Steephill Castle estate, was inconveniently situated for the town

Ventnor

Ventnor is a seaside resort and civil parish established in the Victorian era on the south coast of the Isle of Wight, England. It lies underneath St Boniface Down , and is built on steep slopes and cliffs leading down to the sea...

, being some distance west of the town centre and 168 feet above sea level. Consequently it never lived up to the expectations of the operators and was an early casualty of the pruning of the railway network. The station closed along with the others on the line on 15 September 1952. Today the main station building is still standing, surrounded by modern housing in Castle Close.

Other stations on the branch

The other stations on the Ventnor West branch were:

• Merstone
  Merstone (Isle of Wight) railway station
  Merstone railway station, was an intermediate station situated on the edge of Merstone village on the line from Newport to Sandown incorporated by the Isle of Wight and Newport Junction Railway in 1868 , opened in 1875 and closed 81 years later...
  
   (where the branch joined the Newport-Sandown line)
• Godshill
  Godshill railway station
  Godshill station opened on 20 July 1897 at Godshill on the Isle of Wight on the Newport, Godshill & St Lawrence Railway, later the Isle of Wight Central Railway. It opened as a single platform station with a small goods siding and this layout remained until closure...
  
  
• Whitwell
  Whitwell (Isle of Wight) railway station
  Whitwell Station, on the Ventnor West branch of the Isle of Wight Central Railway, was opened on 26 July 1897 along with the other stations on the branch...
  
  
• St. Lawrence
  St. Lawrence railway station
  St. Lawrence railway station was the original terminus of the branch from Merstone until the 1½ mile extension to Ventnor was completed in June 1900. From 1927 the station was downgraded to the status of an unstaffed halt.- Location :...
  
  (the original terminus of the line from 1897 to 1900)

External links

• Ventnor West station on navigable 1946 O. S. map
• Website with old pictures of the Undercliff of the Isle of Wight
• Subterranea Britannica: SB-Sites: Ventnor West Station