In the post Christmas lull we should raise a glass to celebrate the 100th birthday of one of Nottingham’s grandest buildings the Midland Railway station on Carrington Street. The station was opened on Sunday 17 January 1904 and whilst this occasion is unlikely to generate a telegram from the Queen, it deserves some recognition from the citizens of Nottingham.
This grand Edwardian station is the third Midland Station to have been built in Nottingham. The first station was opened in May 1839, by the Midland Counties Railway Company (MCR), on the west side of Carrington Street. This was built as a terminus station at the end of the branch line from Derby but all that remains from this first station are the gate piers at the entrance to the present Magistrates Court off Carrington Street.
By 1844 the MCR had been amalgamated into the Midland Railway Company (MR) and by 1846 the line from Nottingham had been extended to Newark and Lincoln and to Kirkby-in-Ashfield and onto Mansfield by 1849. To operate these services to Lincoln trains had to be reversed out of the station, which was a most unsatisfactory arrangement. So to adapt to the expanding railway network, a new through station was constructed on Station Street, on a site opposite the present Capital One offices, by J E Hall of Nottingham. This new station was opened on 22 May 1848, and has been described as a single storey building of no particular architectural merit.
Whilst the MR had been the first railway company to reach Nottingham, its dominance was eventually challenged by the construction of the Great Central Railway (GCR) with its grand Victoria station opening in May 1901. To remind everyone of its arrival, the GCR line crossed the western end of the Midland station by means of a 52 metre (170 feet) long bridge on its way into Victoria station. Whilst the bridge has been demolished, the new tram network is now using the surviving viaduct alongside Trent Street.
Faced with this competition and the improved facilities offered at Victoria station, the MR had to rebuild their Station Street station. The site chosen for the new station was an area of open land between the GCR viaduct and Carrington Street, which had by then become the main north-south thoroughfare into Nottingham following the construction of Arkwright Street. To carry out this important development the MR appointed, A E Lambert, a local Nottingham architect who had also been the architect for the Victoria Station and consequently the two buildings shared many similarities in their design.
The first contract for the station buildings was awarded to Edward Wood and Sons of Derby on 23 January 1903, who were also awarded the contract for the buildings on platforms 1 and 2 on 16 September 1903. The contract for the buildings on platforms 4 and 5 was awarded to Kirk, Knight & Co of Sleaford on 18 June 1903, who were also responsible for building the parcels office (Forward House) on Station Street, which opened in November 1903.
The station was built in an Edwardian Baroque Revival style at a cost of £1 million and was described by the Evening News on the eve of its opening (16 January 1904) as a ‘magnificent new block of buildings’. The station was built using a mix of red brick, terracotta (which was used as a substitute for building stone) and faience (a glazed terracotta) with slate and glazed pitch roofs over the principal buildings.
The station’s forebuildings were opened to passengers without any formal ceremony on 17 January 1904, although next day the Evening News reported that the platforms were still in a state of chaos and these were not expected to be ready for another 9 months. However it did consider that ‘the result promises to be the provision for Nottingham of one of the most commodious and most convenient passenger stations in the country’.
The day began with the closure of the booking offices in the old station after the last tickets were issued for the 5:25 London train and the new booking offices were opened in time to issue tickets for the 6:25 Erewash Valley train. No attempt was made to exclude the public from the building and many took the opportunity to view the new station buildings. The Evening News commented on the public’s admiration of the style and elegance of the station approaches and booking hall and went on to describe the day’s events. In the morning, local juveniles swarmed into the station and spent their time playing boisterous games and dodging the duty policeman. Then later in the day, when the juveniles had finally been excluded, many top-hatted gents and their ladies came to promenade after the morning service, no doubt adding some decorum to the proceedings, and ‘to look at the architecturally pleasing buildings and general satisfaction was expressed’. Finally as evening approached the gates were closed and none but passengers were allowed inside.
Since then the Midland station has served Nottingham for a hundred years and the original complex of station buildings and much of their original fabric and grandeur still survive, save for some relatively minor physical changes and adaptations. The challenge for the future is to accommodate the tramline and to upgrade the station infrastructure to provide a station that meets the needs of the travelling public into the twenty-first century. Here’s to another hundred years.
Stephen Bradwell
January 2004
The other prominent building in Nottingham by the rather elusive architect A.E. Lambert is the Albert Hall on North Circus Street, built 1907-9 and replacing Fothergill Watson’s first Albert Hall (1873-6), which was destroyed by fire on 22 April 1906. Lambert was also the architect of Leicester’s Midland station.
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