Worcestershire - Broadway

Broadway is a village in the Cotswolds, just over five miles to the south-east of Badsey.

If members of the Sladden family wanted to visit Cheltenham, they tended to cycle to Broadway and then go by train.  In July 1917, Mela and May cycled from Badsey to Broadway and thence to Cheltenham.  This would have been by train on the line which was originally part of the Great Western Railway’s Cheltenham-Stratford-upon-Avon-Birmingham line, known as the Honeybourne Line, built in 1900-1906.  The station opened in 1904 and closed to passengers in 1960. 

A preservation group, the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Steam Railway company, has restored and reopened around 14 miles of track operating between Cheltenham Racecourse and Broadway, the latest extension to Broadway opening in March 2018.  It plans to extend a further 6 miles to Honeybourne.

At the end of March 1916 there was a tremendous blizzard which resulted in the road from Evesham to Broadway being impassable and 60 telegraph and telephone posts blown down along the route.  Matters had improved by 12th April and Ethel and Juliet Sladden were able to cycle to a meeting at Lady Lifford’s house in Broadway.

In a letter of October 1914, Mela Brown Constable refers to Major Noel of Broadway.  Major Noel in fact lived in Temple Guiting, a village to the south of Broadway.