Bury Transport Museum

Bury Transport Museum, originally a railway warehouse, was built around 1846 and has undergone minor alterations in the 20th century. It was constructed for the East Lancashire Railway Company Ltd. as part of their headquarters in Bury. The building is constructed of coursed rubble sandstone with dressed quoins and voussoirs, and has a Welsh slate roof. The original plan comprised three gabled ranges, originally accommodating two internal trackways. The front elevation consists of three linked gables; the central gable features a wide, semi-circular arched opening with rock-faced dressings, while the flanking, smaller gables have narrower openings. Boarded double doors with vertical boarding are above the arch heads of the doorways. The side and rear walls are similarly detailed with arch-headed doorways. A two-light mullioned window is located close to the north-west corner of the north side wall. Internally, the building retains its open plan, with arcades of cast-iron columns supporting tie beams and valley gutters of the triple-pitch roof. Each roof section has trusses formed from principal rafters with angle braces and vertical metal tie rods supporting single purlins. Original loading platforms and setted floor surfaces remain in place. The building is thought to have formed part of the original station complex developed in Bury around 1846 and is shown on the 1848 Ordnance Survey map. The 1896 map identifies it as the 'Goods Station' and shows two lines entering the building, two lines flanking the building, and a short section of track running parallel to the rear (west) wall, presumably linked by turntables. This is a well-preserved early, large-scale railway warehouse, later identified as a 'goods station', built to facilitate covered storage and transfer of goods between rail and road networks. The building’s scale and detailing anticipate the form of later warehousing and transhipment buildings developed for the railway network.