Having told you only recently about the biggest thermometer ever seen in Leominster I now want to write about the fancy spade and wheelbarrow seen in my accompanying photo. They are older than our Museum which was originally built in 1855 to give the navvies working on the railways somewhere to go after work other than the pub.
The Kington and Leominster Railway was started at the end of 1854. The Act of Parliament for the broad gauge single line from Leominster to Kington received Royal Assent in July 1854 and the company struck a deal with Thomas Brassey who had by now built a third of all the railways in Britain on 14th November 1854 to build it for £70,OOO.

Brassey had a quarter share in the venture. There were cost overruns and delays —well it was a civil engineering project – but not the cost overruns and delays on the scale of Crossrail or HS2. It was completed by July 1857 for £80,000.

On 28th July the inaugural train of 32 coaches travelled from Leominster to Kington where the directors and 300 guests had lunch at the Oxford Arms. The train arrived one and a quarter hours late so not much changes. The return journey brought the same 300 guests to The Royal Oak for dinner. There is a change; The Royal Oak, as you sadly know, has not hosted a dinner party for a long time. I wonder how many of the guests had sore heads the next day?

The spade and barrow maintain their well-kept condition with very little maintenance. I think they probably look much like they did on the morning of 30th November when Lady Bateman cut the first sod, although they must have been cleaned after the day because as the Hereford Times reported on Saturday 2nd December “The rain was now falling somewhat heavily which, of course, had a tendency to lessen the disarrangement which prevailed. The anxiety of the public to catch a glimpse of her Ladyship was so great that barriers were overleaped and no ordinary difficulty was experienced in keeping clear a space of sufficient extent to enable the ceremony to be performed…” This sounds to me like a superb understatement which in 21st century English would be likely to become, “it was insane until it started throwing it down even then there were serious crowd control issues and it was a mud bath!”

The barrow is made of mahogany (all species are CITES listed now) and it and the spade are, unarguably, lustrous.

The tools were in the hands of the Batemans until 1934 when they were given to Leominster. The town council still owns them and once a year the town clerk comes to check we are looking after them properly.

So Leominster ended up with these two beautiful objects. When the Museum opens again in April you will be able to view them, though I think the people of Kington might be aggrieved — the first sod was cut there.

Marcus Williams

This article was originally published in the Jan/Feb 2026 edition of Leominster News.