An exhibition by researchers from the University of Portsmouth and Havant Local History Group contained information about a tragic accident in the Buriton railway tunnel in 1927 – but led to more details about a local railway worker being discovered.
Part of ‘Railway 200’, marking the 200th anniversary of the modern railway, the exhibition in Portsmouth focused on the lives of some of the region’s railway workers.
One man featured in the exhibition was William Howard, an underman / general hand employed by the Southern Railway to help with the fitting of rails, cleaning and general labouring. He sadly died after a tragic accident in Buriton Tunnel in February 1927 whilst he was unloading ballast from wagons onto the track. More details about William and the incident are available here.
But when one of Buriton’s researchers visited the exhibition in October 2025 another link to Buriton was spotted – which subsequently led to some more fascinating findings.
Another of the people featured in the exhibition was Arthur Emmanuel Churchill, a railway signalman who died from a health complication in 1911 leaving a widow and an orphaned young son: Arthur Lewis Churchill. It was explained that as Arthur snr had been a London & South Western Railway employee, his son, Arthur was given a place in the LSWR orphanage at Woking.
What was unknown to the University’s researcher, Dr Mike Esbester, was that Arthur jnr had also become a railway signalman later in his life, spending time in both the Buriton and Petersfield signalboxes – and that his son, Gordon, was still alive, living in the family home in Petersfield and already working with the Buriton Heritage Bank to add to local history knowledge.
The Heritage Bank was able to arrange for Gordon and Dr Esbester to meet and a lot more information about the family and about railway memories is now available here.
As part of the Portsmouth Area Railway Pasts project, information about Arthur Churchill and William Howard has been displayed in the up (London-bound) waiting room at Petersfield Station and Mike Esbester was also able to arrange (with great thanks to Network Rail) for Gordon Churchill to visit the 141-year old Petersfield Signalbox before it closed in October 2025 as part of revised signalling arrangements on the route between London Waterloo and Portsmouth. Network Rail filmed a chat with him to record some of his local memories.
Gordon was very happy to have visited the signalbox and noted that it was rather different to his experiences in the 1950s when he visited his father working there!
