The end of the line?

THE current opposition to plans to erect a cantilevered, 16-storey tower over the concourse of Liverpool Street Station is the latest in a series of stand-offs across the decades to protect the best of London’s railway architecture. At the time of writing, the scheme was opposed by eight conservation groups and Historic England. A public petition, See it, Say It, Save It!, had more than 11,000 signatures. A Victorian Society-led Liverpool Street Station Campaign (Athena, May 10), with Griff Rhys Jones installed as president, has revived memories of the 1970s battle at Liverpool Street, spearheaded by Sir John Betjeman, which eventually ended in a remodelling widely applauded for its sensitivity towards the historic fabric.

It’s worth remembering that the great London Victorian railway terminals so fiercely prized today must have seemed overwhelming monstrosities to locals in their time, their infrastructures carving through communities and causing the displacement of many inhabitants. Even so, it’s generally accepted that London has a proud legacy of railway buildings from that period, several of the terminals among the finest in the world. The oldest, London Bridge, the capital’s first rail terminal on opening in 1836, is not among them, although the Architects’ Journal described it as ‘the most curiously uplifting’ of London’s stations after a highly effective upgrading by Grimshaw Architects in 2019 (winner of the RIBA Stirling Prize). Technically second in seniority, Euston (1837), is a heritage bypass. The demolition of Philip Hardwick’s Great Hall and Euston Arch (the station’s original neo-Classical entrance), together with the rest of the station’s front buildings between 1961–63, was a galvanising event for the built conservation movement. All that remains of the formal layout of the old station are the entrance lodges (Grade II listed).

However, London’s three Grade I-listed terminals—King’s Cross, Paddington and St Pancras International—are emotive survivors of the so-called Golden Age of Steam, each a distinctive landmark in Victorian railway architecture. Although Paddington opened in 1854, two years after King’s Cross, trains had been running from the site since 1838, from a temporary terminal built by the Great Western Railway (GWR) for its new line between the capital and Bristol. Isambard Kingdom Brunel, with help from Matthew Digby Wyatt and Owen Jones, designed the new station which, of all the large London terminals, seems the least changed. Its visual impact begins the moment you walk down the ramp from Praed Street, Brunel’s train-shed roof visible ahead. The layout is simple, the station combining functionality with elegance; the decorative ironwork as depicted in William Powell Frith’s The Railway Station (1862) remains intact. Above all, Paddington still feels like a place of travel, as opposed to the retail experience offered elsewhere, when the trains, all but invisible until you pass beyond the ticket barrier, seem like afterthoughts.

Lewis Cubitt’s King’s Cross, built for the Great Northern Railway, also has a pleasing simplicity. The monumental frontage is entirely lacking in pomposity, the plain yellow brick walls fortress-like when glimpsed around the corner from the Gothic frippery of neighbouring St Pancras. The two round-arched openings echo the shape of the train-shed roofs behind them. There is little attempt to disguise the building as anything other than a train station, all the more appropriate for one that became associated with express travel to Scotland and northern England and the record-breaking exploits of Flying Scotsman and Mallard The fan-vaulted swirl of the roof to a new concourse by John McAslan is striking and much admired, if not strictly in character with the austerity of the exterior.

The trend of fronting railway stations with luxury hotels kicked off with Hardwick’s Great