Christ's Hospital Railway Station

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Christ's Hospital railway station is located on the Arun Valley Line from Crawley to Littlehampton, Bognor Regis and Chichester. The station was originally built primarily to serve Christ's Hospital school. Today it mostly serves some parts of Horsham and several scattered rural settlements. It has an apostrophe in its name.

At first it was built with large buildings and 7 platforms, being at a junction between the Arun Valley Line, the Cranleigh Line to Guildford and the Steyning Line to Shoreham. This had been done in anticipation of serving the large school and future developments in Horsham. However, the school turned out to accept boarders only and western expansion of Horsham never materialised, partly because much of the land around it was owned by the school. Throughout its life it was regarded as a white elephant.
The Beeching Axe closed off the Cranleigh and Steyning Lines, the number of platforms was reduced from 7 to 2, the station buildings were downsized and the station itself came from under threat.

A petition of 3,000 signatures was presented to the Queen to save the station, and the station was spared from closure. The station is farely well used considering its rural location, and there are hopes that the Cranleigh Line could (in the end) be re-opened (the trackbed is protected from developments).