Speech House Road
Named after the nearby Speech House, Speech House Road began as a simple halt in 1875, but by 1878, the facilities had been expanded. The facilities would continue to expand over the next couple of decades as more and more freight was shipped from this station, especially from Cannop Colliery and the nearby Wood Distillation works.
However, Speech House was in a remote area of the forest and thus it was not surprising that passenger traffic from the station was sparse. Upon withdrawal of the passenger services in 1929, most of the buildings were converted to goods use. The station was used to unload ammunition during the Second World War.
The closure of Cannop Colliery in 1960 removed most of Speech House Road's traffic, and although there was traffic from the wood distillation plant and a few other small concerns, the section of line between Speech House Road and Coleford Junction was closed in 1963. Today the area around the station is a picnic area for tourists and the trackbed is now a cycleway. The state of the trackbed north of Parkend would make an extension to Speech House Road difficult and extremely costly for the Dean Forest Railway, although this would now appear to be a serious goal for them, although a requirement to cross the road at this location by bridge rather than by level crossing is likely to result in the new station being further north of the original one.
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