NEW BRIDGNORTH BUILDING FOUNDED ON AUTHENTICITY
Severn Valley Railway refreshment facilities incorporate period Great Western details.
Phase One of the Severn Valley Railway’s Bridgnorth development project was completed on February 16, with the opening of the station’s new, GWRstyle refreshment building.
Designed by the railway’s Conservation & Heritage Committee, “the building is based on the style used by the Great Western Railway in its buildings circa 1910, and a great deal of attention has been paid to incorporate many details appropriate to that period,” said Bridgnorth Project Team Leader David Postle.
“The building was erected using the nearest modern equivalent to the ubiquitous GWR blue brindle bricks, and great care was taken to replicate the traditional English bond pattern. All the stonework, mainly the sills and lintels, uses traditional Forest of Dean stone, which the GWR used in most of their buildings in the early part of the 20th century. In fact, the stone came from the same quarries that had supplied the GWR all those years ago.
“Diamond paviours [paving stones], recovered from various redundant stations, were used for the outside terracing and all the joinery, from doors and windows to picture rails and poster frames, was also manufactured to GWR designs.
“The refreshment room interior uses chairs which were formerly used in Swindon Works and are now fully restored with GWR-patterned fabrics. Period posters and a GWR clock adorn the walls and the central feature is a cast-iron fireplace so that genuine fires can be lit to create the period atmosphere.”
The new building opened on the same day that BR ‘4MT’ 4-6-0 No. 75069 returned to service for the first time since 1994, and in authentic BR lined black livery (see page 22).
Mr Postle said: “It was a busy
day. A good number of visitors were able to see the end product of several years’ work, both in the design and the building, and also had the bonus of witnessing the first day in traffic of No. 75069.”
The building is part of a wider scheme to improve car parking and access, as well as volunteer accommodation, and has been funded by the successful 2016 share offer which raised over £2.5 million.
Work on Phase Two – the creation of a new car park and installation of the former Bristol Bath Road turntable – is already under way, but is being hampered by the site’s close proximity to what is thought to be the remains of an English Civil War outpost.
Mr Postle said: “The car park is basically constructed and in operation, although there is still some finishing work to be done. With regard to the turntable, there is a bit more design work being done at the moment because the
original design was very close to what is thought to be a Civil War site of a gun emplacement, so we are currently looking at ways in which it can be moved a bit further away to satisfy Historic England and at the same time be able to sustain the track geometry onto the
table without reversing.”