Former glories restored at Stamford
A six-month project to upgrade Grade 2-listed infrastructure at Stamford station has been completed by Network Rail, with the help of a £150,000 grant provided by the Railway Heritage Trust. PAUL STEPHEN reports
Stamford is one of the UK rail network’s finest examples of a mock Tudor-style station. Opened by the Midland Railway in 1848 on its Syston-Peterborough route, it was designed to reflect the architectural grandeur of nearby Elizabethan stately home Burghley House.
With such architectural value, NR worked closely with station operator East Midlands Trains and the Railway Heritage Trust to ensure that the station’s recent £1 million-plus upgrade and repair project was sensitively managed, in order to preserve the station’s historical fabric.
The end result is a new roof on the main station building, constructed from traditional and locally sourced Collyweston stone, while a new glazed canopy has been installed to closely resemble the old, over a newly resurfaced Platform 1.
The need for a new canopy became urgent after an incident in August 2014, when a stone corbel came crashing down onto the platform surface where passengers normally wait for Peterborough-bound services.
This posed an obvious risk to public safety, and so to avoid any further hazards the original wooden canopy was promptly dismantled. Meanwhile, subsequent structural inspections revealed the cause of the falling corbel to have been excessive movement of the canopy’s beams, resulting from wind uplift as heavily loaded freight trains passed through the station.
Railway Heritage Trust Executive Director Andy Savage explains that this design flaw and susceptibility to wind uplift was partly due to the canopy’s primitive ‘bodge’ construction.
He also feels that its architectural value was questionable, given that it was built almost 60 years after the station opened, and thus was not in keeping with the Midland Railway’s more traditional and widely deployed style of canopy.
The RHT was consequently persuaded to financially assist the project, as it met both of the organisation’s primary objectives: to assist train operators preserve listed buildings; and to facilitate the transfer of non-operational premises to third parties willing to undertake their preservation.
East Midlands Trains will now seek commercial tenants to occupy empty premises within the upgraded station building.
Savage explains: “The whole canopy was fundamentally pretty tatty. The original design was atypical for the Midland Railway, and was a cheap construction built in 1907 using corrugated iron.
“The canopy was unsafe and unsightly, so I’m very happy with the end result. We have two objectives, and this ticked the box for us as
it is an interesting combination of old and new - the original Midland canopy with modern engineering.”
Graham Taylorson, senior asset engineer at NR LNE and East Midlands, adds: “On August 29 2014 a freight train shook one of the metal beams, which shook a corbel that fell to the platform but thankfully didn’t hit anyone. EMT had also noticed water ingress in the building, so the decision was made to sort out the drainage and the roof at the same time as the canopy.
“It used to be very dark under there, with just a single strip light at the back. So we put in a glazed roof and nice new LED lights that were quite expensive, but give off a nice light.
“The Collyweston stone for the roof was hard to come by, but we managed to get some reclaimed from an old slate mine. Each tile has had to be hand cut, which is a very time-consuming job requiring highly skilled craftsmen, but it was more than worth it. In fact, just today we’ve had people say how much of a wonderful job we’ve done.”