CHAPTER XVIII - Bishopsgate Railway Terminus
The Shoreditch Terminus of the
Eastern Counties Railway Line
Demolished
The original station on this site was the
London passenger terminus of the railway
line from Norwich and Yarmouth built by
the Eastern Counties Railway Company under an
Act of 4 July 1836. (ref. 1) Until 1846 it was known
as Shoreditch Station and thereafter officially as
Bishopsgate Station.
In December 1834 the company contemplated
placing the terminus in the vicinity of Brick Lane. (ref. 2)
By the Act of 1836 the terminus was authorized
to be sited ’at or near High Street, Shoreditch’.
The building of the line was begun in March
1837. (ref. 3) By October 1838 the company was discussing the amount of land to be purchased for the
site of the terminus, (ref. 4) and in February 1839 it was
decided to proceed with the construction of the
passenger terminus at Shoreditch, according to
the plan and model submitted by the company's
engineer, John Braithwaite. It was to contain
five sidings. (ref. 5) In the following month a tender of
some £17,500 for the construction of the station
and adjacent viaduct was accepted from Mr.
Curtis. (ref. 6)
Most of the purchases for the terminus and
final stretch of line through Spitalfields were made
in 1839 and 1840. (ref. 7) The line through the outskirts of London was raised on viaducts, and the
estimated expense was greatly exceeded because of
’the unexpected varying and extraordinary increase of the depth in the foundations of nearly all
the piers and abutments, consequent upon passing
thro’ crowded building property, intersected with
sewers, old ditches and numerous cesspools’. (ref. 8)
By June 1839 the station was ’in progress’, (ref. 9)
and a temporary station was opened at Devonshire
Street, Mile End, as terminus of the stretch of line
from Romford. (ref. 10) The construction of a temporary station at Brick Lane was considered in
March 1840 but it was decided instead to open
the line to Shoreditch as soon as possible. (ref. 11)
In the meantime, in July 1839, the Northern
and Eastern Railway Company had obtained
statutory authority to abandon its intended ter
minus at Islington and to share the line to Shoreditch with the Eastern Counties Railway Company. (ref. 12) By this Act a station was to be provided
for the Northern and Eastern Company ’near to
the London Depot or Terminus of the said
Eastern Counties Railway’. The management of
the station was vested in the latter company, which
was empowered to enlarge its station. A correspondent writing to The Builder in 1886 said that
’John Braithwaite to some extent anticipated the
development of traffic and proposed a double
station, one for the [Northern and Eastern]
Cambridge line and another [Eastern Counties]
to Colchester, making a much more imposing
work, but financial difficulties supervened’. (ref. 13)
There may have been a modification in the plans
for the station at this time as Braithwaite submitted further plans for the ’proposed stations at
Shoreditch and Brentwood’ in March 1840 and in
May was required to choose any plan or estimate
not exceeding £4,800. (ref. 14)
By November the terminus was sufficiently
advanced for the closing of the Devonshire Street
station to be considered. (ref. 15) Work continued on it,
however, until at least the autumn of 1842. In
January 1841 the company had resolved that ’the
utmost possible simplicity and economy be required to be kept in view’ in the remaining work
on the terminus. (ref. 16) In June it was decided to
enlarge the terminus: details of this are not known,
but in October the ’Carriage-Road’ on the south
side of the station was ordered to be extended, at
an estimated cost of £72O. (ref. 17) By the following
year some ’opposition of the parish authorities’
had been overcome, (ref. 18) and in September Braithwaite reported that ’the most essential part of the
London Terminus is fast approaching completion;
and the Offices are now occupied by the respective
departments of both Companies’. (ref. 19) The ’South
Angle Tower’ was still being discussed in October,
but the work was probably completed soon afterwards. In the autumn and following spring the
opening of an hotel at the terminus was being
negotiated, and by April 1843 attention was
turned to the construction of the goods station in
Bethnal Green. (ref. 20)
In December 1844 it was reported that the
company intended to extend the line ’to the Cityroad, near Old-street’, (ref. 21) but this was not done.
It has been supposed that the station which was
replaced by the Bishopsgate Goods Station and
which is shown on Plate 50a was built in 1849 by
Sancton Wood, the architect of Cambridge and
other Eastern Counties stations and of Kings
bridge Station, Dublin, to replace the station built
in c. 1840, which is attributed to William Evill. (ref. 22)
In 1846 and 1847 the company, under the influence of George Hudson, who had become
chairman in 1845, obtained authority to enlarge
the terminus. (ref. 23) Nevertheless, an aerial view of the
terminus in 1843 (ref. 24) and descriptions of the station
in 1844 and 1847 (ref. 25) make it evident that the station
built in 1839–42 was essentially that which was
replaced in 1878 by the Bishopsgate Goods Station.
An analysis of the company's accounts from 1845
to 1849 given in a report of a committee of
shareholders made in the latter year makes no
mention of a rebuilding of the terminus. (ref. 26) The
embarrassed state of the company's finances at
this time would not have made it easy to carry out
the enlargements authorized in 1846 and 1847,
and in November 1847 it was reported that the
project had been abandoned. (ref. 27) In July 1848 some
ground scheduled ’for the enlargement of this
station as contemplated in 1846’ was ordered to
be purchased. (ref. 28) There may have been some east
ward extension at this time but there can hardly
have been substantial alterations in the main
structure of the station.
In the obituary notice of Sancton Wood published in The Builder in 1886 he was said by a
former pupil to have been ’engaged by Mr. John
Braithwaite to design the station buildings on the
Eastern Counties Railway, and was the architect
of the old terminus at Shoreditch’. The correspondent already quoted commented on this that
’his design for the Eastern Counties Terminus was
a very different thing from what was executed’,
and appears to have identified Wood's design with
Braithwaite's abortive project for a ’double
station’. (ref. 29) Wood may well have been responsible
for the design of the buildings surrounding the
platforms and sheds. In the company minute
books, however, only Braithwaite's name is mentioned in connexion with the design of the station.
Braithwaite was explicitly said to have designed
the sheds in the description of the station by
William Evill published in The Builder in Decem
ber 1844. (ref. 30) In 1845 Sancton Wood prepared
plans for the enlargement of the northern, departure, side of the terminus, and also for the building
of a goods station in Bethnal Green, both of which
he was required to submit to Mr. Robert Stephenson for approval. In May a tender of some
£16,000 for the construction of the goods station
was accepted, but the work at the terminus was
postponed and when in August Wood submitted
plans for ’temporary alterations’ costing £4,000
or less orders were given for new plans to be prepared ’on a more limited scale’, (ref. 31) suggesting that
any alterations for which Wood was then responsible were not on a very large scale.
In November 1843 a correspondent of The
Builder had commended the use of corrugated
iron roofing ’like to the most beautiful roof at the
Eastern Counties Railway, Shoreditch, excelled
nowhere in elegance, lightness and simplicity’. (ref. 32)
The station was raised on brick arches, and to
avoid the effects of vibration the arches supporting
the roof-columns of the shed were independent of
those supporting the concourse. The corrugated
iron roof of three semi-elliptical spans was supported by two ranges of seventeen cast iron
columns, centred at 13 feet 9 inches and linked by
light arched ribs. The roof over the middle aisle
spanned 36 feet and was raised to admit a light
arcaded iron and glass clerestory on each side. The
side aisles each spanned 20 feet 6 inches and were
day-lit by small circular roof lights, one over each
bay. The roof was erected by Messrs. Walker
and Sons, of Bermondsey, who purchased the
patent of Mr. H. R. Palmer, the inventor and
patentee of the corrugated iron, at a charge including fixing of £6 10s. per square of 100 superficial feet, the whole cost of the three roofs being
£1,365. A full description is given in The Builder,
1844, pp. 638–9.
The stone-faced exterior of the station was a
well composed Italianate design. The concourse
was flanked on the north and south sides by long
two-storeyed ranges, terminated at the west end,
and probably at the east, by boldly projecting
pavilions crowned with attic storeys. The western
pavilions were linked by the recessed screen-wall
fronting the concourse, its two storeys raised on a
rusticated basement against which twin stairways
rose, left and right, to a doorway in the return
face of each pavilion. Before the west front was a
semi-circular court or area, partly enclosed by the
ramped approach roads leading from the street to the raised concourse. The rusticated basement
formed a plinth for the Doric pilastered first
storey, where each pavilion had three rectangular
windows placed between single pilasters, and the
main front had seven arch-headed windows
ranged between paired pilasters. This arrangement was reversed in the second storey where the
three windows of each pavilion had arched-heads
linked by bard-imposts, and the seven rectangular
windows of the main front were dressed with corniced architraves, the central window being
emphasized with a triangular pediment. The
attic windows were rectangular and each pavilion
was finished with a bold bracketed entablature
and a blocking-course. The two-storeyed north
front was feirly simple in expression, with a
triangular pediment to rnark the position of the
booking-hall entrance.
Originally there were three lines of rails, with a
gauge of five feet, under the central span of roof,
and one line of rails and a platform under each
side span. The station appears to have been considerably altered before 1873, for the Ordnance
Survey map of that date shows that the southern
range of roof-supporting columns had been
removed, and the southern platform curtailed,
whereas the departure platform and north range of
offices had been considerably lengthened (fig. 64).
In 1851 a guide to London at the time of the
Great Exhibition called the station ’a series of
elegant buildings in the Italian style of architecture’, (ref. 33) but a more critical guide of the same period
thought it ’small and confined’ compared with
Euston and King's Cross and regretted that ’a
more monumental character’ had not been given
to the central block. ’It is respectable, but feeble,
in its architectural effect; too much cut up into
small parts, and without mass.’ (ref. 34)
By 1857 complaint was being made, both of the
difficulty of access to the station and of its
inadequacy: a Letter to the Proprietors by John
Wallen observed that ’so great confusion exists
at busy hours of the day, that passengers accustomed to other lines are frequently heard expressing their disgust and (what is of more consequence
to you) they visit it as little as possible’. (ref. 35)
Bishopsgate Goods Station
The opening of Liverpool Street Station in
November 1875 allowed the Great Eastern
Railway Company, in which the Eastern Counties
Railway Company had been merged, to close the
Bishopsgate terminus as a passenger station and
convert it into a goods depôt. In December 1876
plans for the conversion were ordered to be prepared. (ref. 36) By September 1878 a tender for the first
part of the contract was accepted (ref. 37) and in May
1879 the clearance and rebuilding of the substructure were completed. It was then intended
that the work should be performed under five
contracts, (ref. 38) but the same contractors were
apparently employed throughout, (ref. 39) In March
1880 the cost of the conversion was estimated at
over £250,000. (ref. 40) By May the old facade and
side walls had been completely removed. (ref. 41)
Figure 64:
Shoreditch terminus of Eastern Counties railway, lay-out plan. Based on the Ordnance Survey 1873–5
In January 1881 the station was opened for
general traffic but a further £150,000 was intended
to be spent to enable it to receive the additional
traffic caused by the opening of the ’Northern
Extension’ between Spalding and Sleaford. (ref. 42) In
all, some £422,000 was spent on the station between December 1877 and June 1885. (ref. 43)
The station (Plate 50b) was designed by the
company's engineer, Alfred A. Langley, and built
by Messrs. Vernon and Ewens of Cheltenham. (ref. 41)
In 1881 it was proposed to establish a vegetable
market at the station but this was successfully
challenged by the freeholder and lessee of Spitalfields Market as an infringement of their monopoly
rights. (ref. 44)
At the same time as the building of the Goods
Station, the line between Brick Lane and the
Bishopsgate Low Level Station situated under
Commercial Street was enlarged, to relieve Liverpool Street Station of some of the ’excursion
traffic’. (ref. 38) Further extension of this station was
intended in 1884 and 1885. (ref. 45) The Low Level
Station was closed to passenger traffic in 1916. (ref. 46)
The main building at Bishopsgate Goods
Station has three lofty storeys. The first is a
street-level basement, the second is the goods
station, and the third is a warehouse with an iron
and glass roof supported by lattice girders, resting
on massive iron columns, ranging north to south.
The warehouse floor is similarly supported, and
the basement below the railway tracks consists of a
series of tunnel-vaults, forming roadways and
loading bays for the road transport lorries. The
north and south side elevations are evenly divided
into pediment-gabled bays by rusticated pilasters of
white brick, rising from the blue brick piers of the
basement arches. The red brick face of each bay
contains two tiers of three grouped windows,
dressed with white brick, the lower windows
having stilted segmental-arched heads, whereas the
upper are round-arched. A corbel-table underlines the upper storey and there is a small round
window in the pediment-gable. A later twostoreyed addition of irregular plan almost conceals
the original front from view. The lower part of
this front is open, and massive piers of blue brick,
five feet square, support the girders carrying the
front of the offices in the upper storey. This is of
dark red brick, and in the centre and at each end
is a projecting bay containing a group of four
round-headed windows. Between the bays are
two ranges of nine windows with stilted segmentalarched heads. All the windows are dressed with
white brick and moulded terra-cotta. Across the
front extends a bracketed entablature of terracotta, its Italianate detail reminiscent of Fowke
and Verity's work at South Kensington. The
front additions have simple elevations of red brick,
divided into bays by rusticated pilasters of white
brick. Each bay contains a pair of round-headed
windows and is finished with a corbel-table below
the parapet.