Strawberries and Steam
- wardgem
- Apr 14
- 3 min read
Updated: Apr 15
This week's warmer weather is a good time to reflect on a summer fruit once transported by rail - Hampshire strawberries. For around a century, from the 1860s to the 1960s, the small villages nestled between Southampton and Portsmouth were known collectively as the “Strawberry Coast”. In 1911, the local trade directory for two of the villages (Sarisbury and Swanwick) records nearly all the residents cultivating strawberries, “the produce being sent to Covent Garden market and the provinces.”, and the census in the same year records 55 strawberry growers.1 2 The strawberry trade also attracted seasonal workers, and children skipped school to help bring in the harvest.
The Hampshire Chronicle describes how the industry began in one of the villages: “Some seven or eight years ago [1869-1870] the agent of the principal owner of land in the village, being dissatisfied with the farming of a piece of heath land…resolved to let it out at moderate rent in allotments.” One resident tried strawberries. “Success attending the experiment he extended it, his neighbours watched and followed suit and the strawberry fever quickly became infectious. At the present time nearly the whole field is devoted to strawberries. It is said that a good crop had produced £150 per acre.”3
The distribution of strawberries relied on rail. In the 1880s, the London and South Western Railway opened stations in the villages of Swanwick and Bursledon especially to transport Hampshire strawberries to Covent Garden and around the country. Swanwick even had extra long platforms to speed up the loading process. Queues of strawberry growers, horses, and carts would have formed outside the station, waiting their turn to load produce onto the trains.
The significance of strawberries and the importance of the railways was highlighted in a Daily Mirror report around the time of the 1911 coronation of George V. One grower was worried about getting the strawberries to the London markets for Coronation Day (22 June). Covent Garden would be closed for the day and the train service curtailed, and “the consequence may be that thousands of berries will be spoilt, for, strawberries must be picked on the day they are ripe enough to be sent away or they are useless for the trade.” The newspaper nevertheless reported positively on the sunny weather in the 3,000 acre of strawberry plantations in the district, and that in the middle of the season, 1.5 million baskets of strawberries were typically dispatched each week.4
From the 1960s onward, competition from imported fruit began to undercut the local industry. The construction of the M27 transformed many of these rural villages into commuter suburbs and by the 1980s, commercial strawberry growing in Hampshire had largely disappeared.
Yet it is still possible to find traces of the old industry. There are several pick-your-own strawberry farms in the area. You can see the railway stations at Swanwick and Bursledon, although no longer transporting strawberries. And you can walk the signposted “Strawberry trails”, guiding you through the historic villages and fields, retracing the paths the horses and carts would once have taken to the stations - and perhaps offering a glimpse back to a time when Hampshire’s summers revolved around strawberries and trains travelling to the London markets.
1 Directory entries. Sarisbury and Swanwick, Kelly's Directory of Hampshire & Isle of Wight, 1911. London: Kelly's Directories Limited. p. 485. www.findmypast.co.uk.
2 Census returns search. Sarisbury., Hampshire. STRAWBERRY. 2 Apr 1911. ED 2, Collection: 1911 Census for England and Wales. www.findmypast.co.uk.
3 Hampshire Chronicle. 1878. Strawberry growing at Sarisbury. Hampshire Chronicle. 19 Oct. p. 6. Collection: British Newspaper Archive. www.findmypast.co.uk
4 Daily Mirror. 1911. Strawberry crop. Daily Mirror. 6 May. p. 4. Collection: British Newspaper Archive. www.findmypast.co.uk