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Although we take them for granted, our railway stations showcase some of Britain’s finest architectural and engineering achievements. As the 19th-century railway boom gathered pace, Victorian railway companies competed to outdo each other with the splendour of their stations, building them ever grander and more ornate in every kind of architectural style from Tudor to Gothic, Italianate and classical.
And yet, as we hurry to catch our train or find our bus home, how many of us take time to appreciate these striking buildings? How many have stopped to wonder at the great arc of the iron-and-glass roof of St Pancras – at 243ft, the largest span in the world for more than 20 years after it was completed in 1868?
Or the colourful capitals of flowers and foliage supporting the cast-iron girders and canopies at Great Malvern? Or even what John Betjeman declared “the most splendid facade in Britain”, the glorious classical splendour that is Huddersfield railway station?
War memorials
Many stations have memorials dedicated to company employees who fell in war, but there is only one left to those who fell in the Second Boer War (1899-1902), the first war which relied on railways, located under the footbridge on platform one at Derby station.
Among the more unusual war memorials is the “Soldiers Gate”, leading off the concourse at Manchester Victoria Station, through which men passed on their way to the Great War.
Covering the metal door is a sheet of glass punctured by holes that look like shell blasts and form a map of the cemeteries in Belgium and France where the dead are buried.
At Waterloo, some 70 million passengers a year enter or leave the station through a Baroque archway, perhaps unaware that it serves as the station’s memorial to those who died in the Great War.
Animals on the move
Animals also feature at many stations. Stuffed in a glass case by platform five at Slough station is “Station Jim”, the last of the Canine Collectors, dogs who would roam stations performing tricks to raise money for charity.
At Andover station, the station cat, Jess, is remembered fondly with a sculpture in the booking hall, while Paddington Bear sits on platform one at Paddington station, exactly where he was found by Mr and Mrs Brown.
A touch of class
Some of the Victorian station buildings that survive provide hidden clues to their former function. The smart Georgian facade of the world’s oldest surviving railway station, Manchester’s Liverpool Road, which opened in 1830, includes a huge five-bay house containing the first-class ticket office, while the second-class booking hall next door merits only a single-bay tradesman’s entrance.
Also home to the world’s oldest station platform, Liverpool Road is now part of the Science and Industry Museum.
Going underground
At the end of platform two at Great Malvern station, a severe Romanesque archway leads to a mysterious winding underground passageway that once took first-class passengers directly under the road to the Imperial Hotel (now a school) without getting wet.
Final journeys
Outside Waterloo station, a rather spooky unnamed entrance archway in Westminster Bridge Road is all that is left of the Necropolis Railway, which, between 1854 and 1941, carried the coffins of the deceased and their grieving families the 23 miles to Brookwood cemetery in Surrey.
According to legend, Winston Churchill decreed that the train carrying his coffin to Oxfordshire should also leave London from Waterloo rather than Paddington so that Charles de Gaulle, the French president, would be forced to visit the station named after Britain’s victory at Waterloo.
Unnoticed statues
Not only are they extraordinary feats of engineering and architecture, but Britain’s railway stations also house all kinds of artworks and treasures, from sculptures and statues to paintings and murals – many of which mostly go unnoticed.
The Victorians put up statues to the engineers and businessmen who built the stations, such as that of “Father of the Railways” George Stephenson, unveiled in 1862 outside Newcastle station, and “the greatest railway builder in the world”, Thomas Brassey, who built a third of Britain’s railways and stands at the entrance to the station he built at Chester.
At the north end of the platform at remote Rannoch station in Scotland, there is a sculptured relief portrait of JH Renton, who funded the line, carved in stone by the grateful workmen who built the line in 1894.
Pioneers and saviours
Some stations feature contemporary bronze figures commemorating the pioneers who built or championed Victorian stations. They include Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who was responsible for the design and construction of the Great Western railway and now sits between platforms eight and nine at Paddington.
A bronzed Betjeman stands on the grand concourse at St Pancras clasping his trilby as he gazes up at the magnificent roof, for which he did more than anyone to save from demolition.
Local heroes
Numerous stations have statues of local heroes that stand unnoticed by passing passengers.
Outside Huddersfield, for instance, is a statue of the town’s most notable son, Harold Wilson, poised as if to hail a taxi. On the footbridge at Stirling station is a bronze bust by Kenny Munro of John Grierson, the pioneering Stirling-born film director, regarded as the father of the documentary.
On the concourse at Hull station, Philip Larkin, the poet, is hurrying to catch a train to a Whitsun Wedding.
Sitting on a bench on platform three at the station in Maidenhead, where he lived, Nicolas Winton is reading a book containing images of the 669 children he rescued from Czechoslovakia on the eve of the Second World War.
At Liverpool’s Lime Street, Ken Dodd, the comedian, is depicted in bronze with his tickling stick beside him, having a chance meeting with “Battling Bessie” Braddock, the Liverpool MP. “Let’s meet at Ken and Bessie,” as they say in Liverpool.
Rail romance
An even greater homage to the railway station as a meeting place is a 30ft-high bronze sculpture of a couple embracing that stands on the Grand Terrace at St Pancras.
Called, appropriately enough, The Meeting Place, the sculpture by Paul Day is intended to evoke the romance of train travel, and is the main reason why Lonely Planet declared St Pancras one of “the world’s most romantic spots”.
Time’s up
Perhaps the strangest overlooked work of art can be found tucked away at the end of platform two at Stoke-on-Trent station. Known as “Chronos”, the sculpture by Vincent Woropay consists of an oversized hand holding in its palm a tiny figure of Chronos, the personification of Time, a somewhat flexible concept on Britain’s railways. Maybe that’s why it’s hidden.
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