Stokes Bay Railway and Pier Company

In 1846 an attempt was made to open a branch line off the main Fareham to Gosport line (opened 1841) from Gosport Road Station to Stokes Bay pier in order to take passengers onward to the Isle of Wight. It was advertised as the Gosport Pier and Branch Railway. It was promoted again in 1854 as the Stokes Bay and Isle of Wight Railway and Pier Company, but the London and South Western Railway (LSWR 1898-1923) would not support the scheme. The Stokes Bay and Railway Pier act was passed by Parliament in 1855 after the Company agreed to let other ferry operators use the pier.

The pier was constructed 1862-63 and passed an inspection by the Government Inspector. The line eventually opened on 6 April 1863, under the Stokes Bay Railway and Pier Company, to transport passengers to the ferry terminal on the pier, from where they could journey on, by steamer, to the Isle of Wight, with an advertised crossing time of 12 minutes. The company sold the branch to the LSWR in 1875.

The double track route ran from Gosport Junction, through Stokes Bay Junction, to Stokes Bay Pier. The terminus was constructed entirely on the pier, which had two wooden platforms, a waiting room and offices.

The pier itself had berths for four steamers. In 1985 an inspection of the pier led to its closure for a while and a temporary platform was added to the north of the pier. The line occasionally handled goods and Mr. Leather (who built Fort Gilkicker and the Spithead Forts) ran his own branch line from the terminus to his construction yard nearby, which also had its own pier. From the steamer to the Isle of Wight passengers could view the new fort at Gilkicker. The battery at Gilkicker Point commands the greater part of the roadstead of Spithead and its approaches, also the entrance to Southampton Water. Gilkicker must be well-known to all visitors to the Isle of Wight, for it is a conspicuous object viewed from the steamers which cross either from Portsmouth or from Stokes Bay to Ryde Pier. - The Illustrated London News - 29 July 1871.

The steamer route to the Isle of Wight was suspended at the outbreak of World War One. The last train ran on the 31 October 1915 and the line closed to passengers on 1 November 1915. The Admiralty rented the pier during WWI and bought the line as far as Gosport Road Station in 1922. The pier was rebuilt with a complex of buildings to form the Torpedo Experimental Station part of H.M.S. Vernon. Here the pier and its cranes were used for the preparation of torpedoes for test runs. By the early 1930s Stokes Bay was used for air dropped torpedo tests and the pier was used for recovering torpedoes.

The track to Gosport Road Station was lifted by 1930 but the Admiralty replaced the remainder to the pier with a narrow gauge railway after 1933.

The last use of the pier was by the Royal Naval degaussing service until it moved to Fort Rowner.

The buildings on the pier were removed in the 1960s and the pier was demolished in stages between 1972 and 1976. It was not until 1985 that some remains of the supports were finally destroyed by the Royal Engineers diving establishment at Marchwood, who offered to remove 90 piles and two crane bases free of charge. They agreed to undertake this over a period of two years in seven to ten visits a year, using explosives.

Stokes Bay Pier in use as

a Torpedo Experimental Station in 1930