The station opened on 1 August 1871[1] about a year after the extension of the broad gauge line from Cheddar to Wells had been built.

The line was converted to standard gauge in the mid-1870s and then linked up to the East Somerset Railway to provide through services from Yatton to Witham in 1878.

[2] The Yatton to Witham line closed to passengers in 1963; Wookey station closed on 9 September 1963,[1] though goods traffic continued to the paper mills at Wookey until 1965.

It is listed in the Geological Conservation Review because of the exposure of a 3-metre (9.8 ft) thick sequence of Pleistocene-aged cryoturbated gravels which exhibit scour-and-fill structures in their lower part.

A small, silty channel-infilling has yielded an assemblage of palynomorph spores dating from the last (Devensian) glacial period.