Railway and Market Garden

In 1839 'The Gardeners Chronicle' had predicted that the London vegetable markets would one day be supplied by market gardens much further away from than those on the outskirts of London, due to the spread of the railways. This became a reality for Belton on 1st June 1858, when The East Suffolk Railway's Belton Station opened. (It was renamed 'Belton and Burgh' in 1923). Until then the village had been quite an isolated place. By horse-drawn vehicle Great Yarmouth was over an hour away. Now the same journey could be made in minutes. More importantly, London and its produce markets were only hours away. The growing of fruit and vegetables for local consumption and sale on Yarmouth Market was well established but small scale. Now it was worthwhile producing large quantities for London. With the railway came the market gardens, something with which Belton would be associated for the next 100 years.

Some of the local farmers, like Thomas Farman, converted to market gardening. Others combined market gardening with their own trades including inn keeper, coal merchant, butcher, shopkeeper and even postman and parish clerk. It seemed market gardening provided an opportunity for everyone. It certainly provided an opportunity for agricultural labourer William Guyton of Stepshort. With his son, also William, now living in Lockless Lane they turned to market gardening and over the coming decades built up a thriving business.

The railway had the biggest impact on Belton since the enclosures. As well as stimulating the local economy it changed the appearance of the village. It cut a diagonal from south-west to north-east, coming in on an embankment across the Common to the station at road level, with a level crossing beside it. It then pushed through a cutting between fields in the centre of the village, under Bell Lane bridge, then out across another embankment and over bridges on St John's Road, by the King's Head, and Stepshort.

One unintended effect of the railway was that it attracted a number of suicides. These were tragic events but the outcome of one was so unusual that it deserves to be told. In 1889 a young woman called Rose Burrage, who lived with her father, a market gardener's labourer. discovered she was pregnant. She was unmarried and did not tell her father. One Friday in October of that year, as the time approached for the baby to be born, her friends noticed that she was depressed. That evening she went out to buy a newspaper and never returned.

The next morning a railway platelayer, walking along the line to Belton, found her body on the track. To his surprise he heard a baby cry. A mid-wife was sent for and she found a newly born baby boy, still attached to his dead mother, under her skirts. A doctor from Gorleston concluded that she had been hit by a train, knocked unconscious and a little later died. He thought the baby must have been born while she was lay dying on the track. The Coroner's jury at the inquest returned a verdict of 'suicide while in a state of temporary insanity'. Remarkably, the baby survived and grew up without any injury caused by the strange circumstances of his birth.

By 1900 there was a large concentration of greenhouses to the north of the Green and Station Road South. There were other groups of greenhouses on Station Road North and behind the King's Head. In them grew tomatoes, cucumbers, cress, early lettuces and other early vegetables. These were crops that had come to Belton in little more than a generation.

From the late 19th century on cut flowers became an important part of market gardening. These too were grown in greenhouses in the winter and outside in the summer. Hardy's of Newcastle were a major wholesale dealer and took flowers by the rail-truck load, packed in boxes.

During the interwar years market gardeners were still a big part of Belton life. In the 1929 Kelly's Directory seventeen are listed, including E. F. Guyton who gives his telegram address as 'Tomato, Belton'.

After the World War Two market gardening went into decline. In 1959 local people protested at the proposal to close the Southtown-Beccles railway line. The closure went ahead nevertheless on 2nd November. When the railway closed it was a blow to the market gardens that were now having to compete with foreign imported produce. Some produce would still be sold locally, but the end of an era was approaching for Belton.