A ‘Great British railway journey’ should be a jaunt from significance to significance, with fascination in between. Here, I’ll start at Eastleigh, a true railway town since 1891 but from 29 November 1841 the site of the first major junction on what became the London & South Western Railway (L&SWR), and finish at Portsmouth, an important naval base since the late-12th century. Intermediate stops tell of radical journalist William Cobbett, the brick, a Roman fort as medieval castle, and 18th/19th century fortifications spawning a nature reserve.
Eastleigh
The railway is the raison d’être of Eastleigh, or its modern bulk anyway. There was a 10th century Anglo-Saxon village of ‘East Leah’ mentioned in Domesday Book but little else until the London & Southampton Railway/L&SWR arrived with its Southampton-Winchester line, the railway…