6th May 1874
Snow Hill railway station opens
St Helier once had two railway stations as the two companies running trains on the island – one to the east and one to the west – never managed to complete the connection between their respective lines. Had they done so it would have allowed passengers to travel from one end of the island to the other.
An incomplete line
Snow Hill station was the terminus of the Jersey Eastern Railway, whose services should have extended as far as St Catherine, but never got beyond Gorey. The station had just one platform and a ticket office, but that was all it needed to be able to sell tickets from the capital of Jersey as far as the capital of France, including the ferry from Gorey and the train from Carteret.
Situated below Fort Regent, Snow Hill was demolished in 1932 and the land re-used as a bus station, with Jersey Eastern Railway having gone into liquidation three years earlier. The bus station moved to Weybridge in 1964, which had been the site of St Helier’s second station, so the Snow Hill site could again be repurposed. In 1970 it became the downhill terminus of the cable car that served the leisure centre at Fort Regent. Since the cable car’s closure, the site has been used as a car park.
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Other events that occured in May
Princess Royal opens Zoo’s visitor centre
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The Channel Islands are liberated
- The Channel Islands were liberated on 9 May 1945 after several attempts at negotiating the German army's surrender.
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A ship’s captain broke the law… or did he?
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Daniel Brevint, Dean of Lincoln, is born in Jersey
- Daniel Brevint was son and grandson of Channel Islands clergymen (his father in Jersey and his grandfather in Sark) and became Dean of Lincoln.
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