Steam to Sheffield Park Garden

After a rollercoaster week at work it was good to get out to the beautiful landscape gardens at Sheffield Park, Sussex, to recharge my batteries. It may not have been the best day to visit, with overcast skies and unexpected drizzle, but nothing could diminish the beautiful autumnal colours. It didn’t seem to have deterred the crowds either with the overflow car park called into use to cope with a long queue of visitors.

A view of Sheffield Park House from the garden

My journey to Sheffield Park Garden was an altogether more relaxed affair. I took advantage of the Bluebell Railway’s ‘Giants of Steam’ gala to take a ride down to Sheffield Park behind the sole surviving B12 class express passenger steam locomotive (built by Beyer, Peacock & Co. in 1928), a gorgeous sight in LNER Apple Green.

The splendid recreation of the Southern Railway of the mid 1920s at Horsted Keynes is always a highlight of any visit to the Bluebell, even if I was only passing through this time. There was even a nod to the 21st century Southern experience with a half hour delay on my journey back up the line (the service unravelled with the unfortunate failure of the B12, blocking the line at Horsted Keynes until the stricken train could be shunted into the sidings).

It takes only a few minutes to walk to the gardens from Sheffield Park station, following a well signed footpath across parkland. Once inside the gardens you can take your pick of paths around the four lakes, through the glades and woodland, admiring a landscape that has evolved over hundreds of years. Most notably, the gardens owe much to the work of Capability Brown and Humphry Repton in the late 18th century.

The gardens also include a splendid set of carefully engineered waterfalls which were constructed by James Pulman and Son between 1882-1885 using their secret recipe for Pulhamite, a rather special kind of artificial rock that is most familiar to me from its use in the Zigzag Path in Folkestone. The waterfalls are only switched on for an hour every Tuesday and Friday, so I’ll have to come back to see it working on some future occasion.

Red leaves at Sheffield Park Garden

The Sheffield Park estate was split up in 1953 with the National Trust purchasing the gardens whilst the house remained in private ownership (in the 1980s it was divided into twelve apartments). However, you can still see how beautifully this all fitted together when you take in the view across the Ten Foot Pond from the First Bridge to the gothic house designed by James Wyatt.

Sheffield Park Garden was designed to be at its best in the autumn so its no surprise that the colour on display here, mirrored in the lakes, is such a lure for visitors. I thought it was a wonderful place to unwind and let go of the stresses of the working week. If only you could bottle that effect…

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Blood, custard and a splash of mud

The prospects for a photo charter on the Bluebell Railway in late February did not seem terribly encouraging given the horribly wet start to the year, so it was more than a little surprising to turn up at Sheffield Park to find a beautifully clear sky and all the promise of a good day on the lineside. The forecasts looked pretty rubbish for the week as a whole, so this was more than a little lucky…

Black Five 45231 with the Blood and Custards

The motive power for the photo charter was to be Black Five no. 45231 (without her nameplates) which has been on loan at the Bluebell Railway since 22nd October 2013. Today’s run was expected to be the last steaming of the privately owned locomotive, as things stand, before the loan finishes in March 2014 and provided an opportunity to see her with two sets of stock that she would be unlikely to haul normally – the “blood and custard” liveried Mk1 coaches and the BR era P-Way wagons.

Our day began with the Black Five on the “blood and custard” set with some glorious sunshine to get things rolling, making our way up to Horsted Keynes by mid morning where we switched to the P-Way wagons for a couple of runs past Great Oddynes. My tastes have always been a little biased towards freight and industrial scenes, so this was just marvellous to photograph – even if it did mean standing in mud soup! The condition of the field was certainly confirmation of just how incredibly saturated the land in southern england is at the moment.

After this brief switch, we returned to the “blood and custard” set for the run up to East Grinstead. We had the entire line to ourselves for the day and were privileged to be the first photo-charter allowed to use the extension. This gave us a marvellous opportunity to get some shots from Hazleden which is normally “out of bounds” to photographers. The number of good locations on the extension are limited but this spot was definetly worth the trip up the line.

Black clouds begin to gather at Hazleden

Photographers are normally cursed by the sun disappearing at the wrong time, so the beauty of a photo-charter is the ability to call the locomotive at the moment the sun seems set to appear. There is quite an art to timing the arrival of a loco to match a short break in cloud cover and this skill proved to be a necessity as the clouds steadily built up through the morning. Nevertheless, our luck with the weather seemed to be holding pretty well – rain only arriving after we had returned to Sheffield Park for a short lunch stop.

Black Five and BR era P-Way wagons

In the afternoon we focused on the stretch of line between Sheffield Park and Horsted Keynes, mostly using the BR era P-Way wagons and travelling between locations in the Queen Mary brake-van. The various pools of water along the line provided some interesting opportunities to attempt shots with the locomotive reflected in the water, although this worm’s eye view of the word necessitated an embrace of the muddy ground that few of us relished!

Playing with reflections

The weather gods had been incredibly kind to us and even the sudden delivery of a hail storm mid-afternoon was not enough to put us off our stride. Indeed, the sight of our P-Way train beautifully lit against a backdrop of black skies was one of my favourite moments of the day. So simple but incredibly effective.

After hail and rain, back to sun…

Our day finally ended with a glint shot at Freshfield Bank which I kind of fluffed, but in a day of rich photographic opportunities it was impossible to be disappointed! All in all, this was a terrific photo-charter, brilliantly organised by Jon Bowers. Thanks to all the crews and signalmen for making it possible for such a wonderful day to work to its fullest potential.

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