Brookwood station serves both the villages of Brookwood, Pirbright and Bisley, and Knaphill, a suburb of Woking, but is perhaps best known the adjacent cemetery.
Although the line through Brookwood was opened as early as 1839, it was the establishment of Brookwood Cemetery as an overspill cemetery for London in 1852 that developed the area: the cemetery was provided with two stations of its own on a short branch line, with daily trains from the Necropolis Station (adjacent to London Waterloo) carrying coffins and mourners. In 1864 the then London & South Western Railway opened a station on the main line to serve the village and visitors to the cemetery.
The station was rebuilt in 1904 when the line was quadrupled, and provided with the rather grand brick buildings that still survive.
Today, it is a busy commuter station, with a large car park and cycle storage, though it is not staffed all day (the ticket office is open until 13:00 during the week, until mid afternoon on Saturday, and the ticket office is closed on Sunday). When the ticket office is open, there are toilets on platform 1.
The Monday-Saturday service is 4 trains an hour to London Waterloo, and 2 trains each to Alton and Basingstoke. On Sundays, there is an hourly service to each of Alton and Basingstoke until the middle of the day, when it increases to half hourly. In the the London direction, trains from Basingstoke and Alton call a few minutes apart and combine into a single service at Woking, so there is in effect an hourly service to London in the mornings and a half hourly service in the afternoon and evening.
Note that level access is available only to platform 1 (from Basingstoke/Alton, to London). There are steps to platform 2. (Woking station, 4 miles away, is fully accessible, as is Farnborough.) read more