St Pancras International Station
Nomination: It has to be St Pancras International! If I look that good when I’m 150, I will be delighted. I love St Pancras because it has a unique history. It provides a great experience for rail users and visitors and has shown that the past and new worlds can rub along together quite nicely.
From that wonderful Barlow roof to the history based in beer, the pianos, the art and the employees who work there daily, St Pancras really has something for everyone.
Finally, there aren’t many railway buildings that feature on Trip Advisor. But St Pancras does, and this just goes to show the huge amount of interest and passion that it generates.
You don’t have to be an engineer, artist or train-spotter - St Pancras caters for everyone. Dyan Crowther, CEO, HS1 Ltd
It is fitting that St Pancras International station should be named one of RAIL’s Seven Wonders of the Railway in the year that it also turned 150 years old. The station has long been considered a marvel of Victorian Gothic architecture and engineering and is worldrenowned for its unique beauty.
But it also has a fascinating place in British history and plays a vital part in the running of the modern railway. When the station opened in October 1868 (simply known as St Pancras station at the time), it immediately became famous for having the largest single-span roof in the world - the brainchild of designer William Henry Barlow. That roof is made from a series of wrought iron ribs that create a space 100ft high, 240ft wide and 700ft long.
This was no accident. It was built by the Midland Railway Company as a statement to outshine neighbouring King’s Cross station (owned by competitor Great Northern Railway). For all the impressive features of the latter, the seemingly ecclesiastical splendour of St Pancras really does bring new meaning to the term ‘cathedral station’. In fact, so deceiving is its architecture that it is said that in times gone by, an American tourist asked where he could find a place of worship and was directed to St Pancras Church. Mistaking the station for a house of God, he asked when the next service was taking place - and was presented with a list of departure times.
It is sometimes difficult to fathom how this impressive structure has survived for 150 years. Enduring five bombs being dropped on or near the station during the First World War, the London Society suggested in 1921 that the station should be closed. Thankfully, these calls came to nothing. But then came the Second World War and the station suffered yet more damage. After the war, road transport was taking over and in 1966 British Rail proposed to demolish the station.
A successful campaign led by the poet laureate John Betjeman and architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner put paid to that when the station received Grade 1-listed status in November 1967.
It is Sir John Betjeman (a statue of whom adorns the upper concourse today) who truly captures the romance of St Pancras in his writing of it: “What the Londoner sees in his mind’s eye is that cluster of towers and pinnacles seen from Pentonville Hill and outlined against a foggy sunset and the great arc of Barlow’s train shed gaping to devour incoming engines, and the sudden burst of exuberant Gothic of the hotel seen from gloomy Judd Street.”
In 1993, a turning point was reached in the station’s future when the Government decided to plan a high-speed route from the Channel Tunnel to St Pancras… what is now High Speed 1.
Such is the magnificence of St Pancras that it’s been mistaken for a house of God, if a well-known anecdote is to be believed. True or not, St Pancras is a shrine to the power of the railway
An £800 million restoration enabled the station to be reborn in 2007 as St Pancras International - UK rail’s gateway to Europe. The modernisation took three years and doubled the length of the station, adding six new platforms. More than 5,000 individual contractors were involved in the transformation, which also became a catalyst for several billion pounds’ worth of regeneration in the Camden area.
HS1 Ltd holds a 30-year concession to operate the station, along with the rest of the high-speed route it serves, and employs the services of Network Rail (High Speed) - a subsidiary of NR - to manage it. Today, the station is not only the terminal for Eurostar services from the continent, it also handles East Midlands Trains and Thameslink services to Corby, Sheffield and Nottingham on the Midland Main Line and Southeastern high- speed trains to Kent, as well as Thameslink cross-London trains.
According to the Office of Rail and Road, St Pancras is in the top ten most-used stations based on passenger entries and exits. In 201617 there were 33,492,476, taking the station up from its ranking of 11th place the previous year.
You could write a book about all the interesting and quirky facts about this impressive station (and many have), but sadly there is not space here to wax lyrical about the unit of measurement for the station’s columns being the length of a beer barrel, or the fact that Fortnum & Mason keeps bees on the roof… those stories will have to keep for another day. Until then, let us be glad this 150-year-old masterpiece is still standing to delight many more generations of visitors.