Goods Shed, Bridlington Railway Station, Bridlington, East Riding of Yorkshire

Summary

Railways goods shed and office, 1846, designed for the York and North Midland Railway by George Townsend Andrews.

Description

Railways goods shed and office, 1846, designed for the York and North Midland Railway by George Townsend Andrews.

MATERIALS: yellow brick laid in Dutch bond, ashlar dressings, with a Welsh slate clad roof.

PLAN: the rectangular-plan goods shed forms part of Bridlington railway station approach and stands approximately 35m north-east of the station entrance, orientated roughly south-west to north-east, on the south-eastern side of the track-bed. A small goods office block projects from the south-western end of the building.

EXTERIOR: the main range of the goods shed is a tall single-storey 5 x 2-bay structure, built on an ashlar plinth with an impost band at the springing level of the round-arched openings in all elevations. The south-east elevation has a central round-arched former Diocletian window that has been lowered to the level of the former internal platform level, as evidenced by the secondary red brick to the window jambs. This window is flanked to either side by a round-arched former cart loading bay, fitted with a pair of rolling timber doors with closely barred square ventilation panels. One of the rolling doors of the right-hand loading bay has a wicket door. Each of the two end bays are occupied by a tall secondary vehicle doorway with flat brick lintels, which occupies the former positions of Diocletian windows that lit the interior. The rail-side north-west elevation retains its original appearance and symmetry with three Diocletian windows and two railway wagon loading-bays, closed by pairs of timber rolling doors.

The exposed north-east gable wall has a pair of round-arched openings; the right-hand opening is the former railway wagon doorway and is closed by a pair of partially glazed secondary timber doors, while the left is a former window opening with a lowered pedestrian doorway. The railway wagon doorway in the left-hand bay of the south-west wall has been bricked-up; it has pintles set in the springing of the arch for a pair of hinged loading-gauges. To the right is a single-storey goods office entered by an open-porch doorway, flanked by a 4 x 3 sash window opening. The north-west elevation also has a similar window that formerly overlooked the weighbridge, and the south-east elevation is blind. The goods office has a hipped roof clad in Welsh slate that butts up against the south-west wall, beneath the eaves of the main range. A brick chimney rises from the eastern slope of the roof.

The main range has a truncated former hipped roof with deep eaves, now with a gabled northern end. The roof is clad in Welsh slate and is drained by a mixture of cast-iron and plastic rainwater goods.

INTERIOR: the interior of the goods shed was designed to be a simple open-plan, well-lit space, enabling unobstructed movement of goods and vehicles. This space has white-washed brick walls and a secondary reinforced concrete slab floor, with small temporary timber offices at either end. The substantially framed timber rolling doors to the loading-bays are suspended by rollers on rails above each opening. The diagonal timber plank roof lining rests on rafters, supported by a pair of timber purlins per side, which are in turn supported on King-post trusses. The trusses are linked by an off-centre longitudinal beam that is braced at either end of the shed. The goods office is a simple rectangular-plan room heated by a fireplace against the south-east wall and has an internal door to the goods shed in the north-east wall.

History

The York and North Midland Railway opened Bridlington railway station in 1846. The company was owned by George Hudson, and the well-respected George Townsend Andrews acted as its architect. He designed a range of station buildings including ticket offices, train sheds, station houses, hotels, foot bridges, engine sheds, and several goods sheds/warehouses for the York and North Midland Railway, and for other companies including: Great North of England Railway; York, Newcastle and Berwick Railway; and Newcastle and Darlington Junction Railway. Unlike the functional and utilitarian styles adopted by many contemporary railway companies, G T Andrew's sheds expressed a common architectural vocabulary and quality, using broad Diocletian windows resting on a continuous sill band, round-headed railway and cart bays, and low hipped slate roofs. The number of bays and the length of the sheds varied depending on the size of the town served; however, most were three-bays in length with exceptions like Bridlington, which has a five-bay length. Some, as was the case at Bridlington, also had an open loading area at one end of the shed.

Initially, Bridlington station was opened as a terminus of a branch line extension from Hull, but just over a year later it became a through-station, with a double railway line extending to Seamer Junction, connecting it with Scarborough and York, via Bempton, Hunmanby, and Filey. Although tourism was a major source of income from the outset, the line was also heavily used for freight purposes owing to the agricultural industry of the Yorkshire Wolds, the linseed oil refineries of the east coast towns, and due to Hull being an important import/export centre. Unusually as early as 1850, the goods sheds of the Scarborough-Hull route were rented partly or wholly to local businesses on fixed terms, usually seven years.

The running lines pass the goods shed on its north-western side, originally with a goods siding along the north-west elevation and another passing through the interior of the shed. The internal track would have been served by a timber platform or stage, fitted with a 9.07 Tonne (10 ton) hand crane for handling heavy goods and crates, with openings for the two cart loading bays in the south-east elevation. At the north-east end was an open-sided three bay loading area with a hipped roof supported on cast-iron pillars with up-swinging braces. Smaller items would have been sorted and stored within this loading area. A goods office was built against the south-west elevation and was equipped with a weighbridge, to weigh railway wagons entering or leaving the shed.

The transport of traditional 'sundry freight' in individual railway wagons slowly declined after the First World War, mainly due to the availability of cheap and rapidly expanding motorised road transport. The introduction of motor vehicles during the C20 brought about the need to change handling methods and resulted in the removal of two of the end Diocletian windows to the south-east elevation, to create additional tall loading-bays for lorries. The decline was accelerated during the late 1950s, when strict limits and constraints were placed on railway freight tariffs by the Railway Merchandise Charges of 1957. This legally bound British Railways to carry any and all goods requested by customers and clients, even if it was uneconomic; a fact that was recognised by the Beeching Report of 1963. The introduction of containerised Freightliner trains in 1966, traveling from depot to depot, sounded the death knell for traditional goods traffic, leading to most small goods sheds closing by the late-1960s. Nevertheless, some of the larger sheds survived in towns with a reasonable catchment area and were hived off to National Carriers Ltd in 1968 and continued in use until wagonload traffic ceased altogether in 1984. In addition to the insertion of two loading bays, the goods shed at Bridlington has been truncated, resulting in the loss of the open loading area at the north-east end and leaving the north-east gable wall exposed. The internal railway track and the platform have been removed and the floor laid in concrete, allowing its use for mechanised goods handling and its later re-use for commercial purposes, including as a furniture warehouse.

George Townsend Andrews (1804–1855) was an architect noted for his buildings designed for the railway companies owned by George Hudson (The Railway King), particularly those of the York and North Midland Railway. He designed several major and minor railway stations that have been listed, including the Old Station, York; Scarborough Station; Hull Paragon Station and Hotel; Kirkham Abbey Station; and Castle Howard Station. In addition, several of his goods sheds have been listed including Hutton Cranswick, Nafferton, Pocklington and Thorpe Arch. His designs were influential with several railway companies following his lead. He also undertook other architectural work, designing several prestigious buildings in York, Harrogate and Halifax, including the Yorkshire Insurance Company, York; de Grey Rooms, York; Royal Halifax Infirmary; and the Montpelier Baths, Harrogate.

Reasons for Listing

The Goods Shed, Bridlington Station, 1846, built for the York and North Midland Railway, is listed at Grade II, for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:

* built in 1846, it belongs to the second phase or 'Heroic Age' of railway development;

* an example of the characteristic and well-designed structures built for the York and North Midland Railway with distinctive features, such as Diocletian windows, stone platband, and low hipped roof;

* an early example of a through goods shed, a design principle that gained widespread adoption later in the C19;

* one of the first railway buildings built using a clearly expressed architectural vocabulary to produce a 'standardised corporate house-style'; an approach subsequently adopted by most railway companies;

* functionally legible, the relationship between administrative and goods handling areas remain evident;

* the evolution and alteration of the building demonstrates changes in the requirements for handling goods during the C20, brought about by the introduction of motor lorries for delivering and collecting goods to and from the station.

Historic interest:

* the York and North Midland Railway's route from Hull to Bridlington was nationally the first to introduce a standardised house style to all of its buildings along the whole length of the railway line;

* designed by the well-regarded architect, George Townsend Andrews, for George Hudson 'The Railway King'.

Group value:

* the goods shed has a functional, spatial and historic group value with the Grade II listed Bridlington Station and Bridlington South Signal Box, and with other listed buildings along the Hull to Bridlington railway line.

External Links

Historic England Listing

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