York Railway Station

Railway station on Station Road, West Side. Built between 1872 and 1877, with the original platforms extended to north and south, a western platform and Tea Room added, and a Platform Signal Box and bookshop constructed between 1900 and 1909. The western platform was refurbished and a new footbridge built in 1938 and 1939. The station was damaged by bomb in 1942 and repaired in 1947. A new Signal Box was constructed in 1951. All windscreens except one were replaced in 1972, and a major refurbishment took place in 1977. The original architects were Thomas Prosser, Benjamin Burley and William Peachey.

The station and train shed are constructed of yellow Scarborough brick in Flemish and English garden-wall bonds with moulded ashlar plinth, plinth band and dressings. The roof is carried on wrought-iron trusses supported on cast-iron columns. The 1930s platform buildings are of colour-washed stucco. The new Signal Box is of orange brick in stretcher bond with header bond on curved corners and artificial stone dressings. The footbridge is iron framed with iron railings. The Platform Signal Box and Tea Room are of timber. Roofs are generally glazed, with some slate and glazed windscreens; extension platforms are covered with corrugated steel sheeting. Stacks are brick, some with moulded stone cornices.

The station consists of an aisled train shed with a former ticket hall and concourse on the eastern side and a portico further east. To the west is an extension platform with service buildings and the new Signal Box built against the train shed western wall.

The portico is of one storey with clerestory and nine bays behind a cantilevered glazed awning. The arcaded front is of keyed segmental arches on pilaster piers with moulded stone imposts and hoodmoulds. The centre bay is open, with flanking bays closed by balustrades of bulbous stone balusters and brick piers, the upper part with glazed timber screens. There is a moulded eaves cornice surmounted by a balustraded parapet. A station clock on an S-shaped projecting bracket incorporating the arms of the North Eastern Railway Company sits to the left of centre.

The former ticket hall front within the portico is of one storey and clerestory with 12 bays, four centre bays breaking forward. Four segment-arched openings in the centre have pilaster jambs with moulded stone plinth bands and imposts. Spandrels at the head are sunk panelled beneath clerestory lights in semicircular keyed brick arches with stone hoodmoulds. Openings on each side comprise some squat six-pane sash windows and some altered to twentieth-century doors, with stepped brick panels with segmental heads, some glazed, in the clerestory.

The train shed elevations are of one storey and clerestory with blind arcades of round-arched recesses between three-stage buttresses with moulded stone offsets. The clerestory above a plain stone band is pierced in each bay by an oculus. There is a moulded stone eaves cornice, badly decayed in places. At each end are massive square terminal piers with moulded bracket cornices and cross pedimented caps. On the western side, the New Signal Box is of three storeys and 13 bays. The main part is articulated in brick pilasters each with an oversize triple keyblock of artificial stone at the head. Windows are metal framed with top-opening or pivoting lights.

The Tea Room Square front is of two storeys and attic with six bays arranged 2:2:2. The centre bays on the ground floor project to form a one-storey canted bay window, balustraded at first floor. To the left is a lower two-storey two-bay block. Ground floor openings to the main part are arcaded in tall keyed round arches with hoodmoulds between pilaster piers with moulded capitals; those to the bay window are crocketed. Windows are recessed, of two lights, five panes high, with blind round heads, over moulded stone sills. The centre bay window is altered to a makeshift door. All first floor windows are segment-headed two-light casements over moulded stone sills and swagged stone aprons, set in cambered arches with garlanded keyblocks. There is a moulded eaves cornice beneath a balustrade of bulbous stone balusters, brick piers and moulded stone coping. A central attic flanked by volutes encloses the swagged arms of the North Eastern Railway. The block to the left has recessed round-headed sash windows on the ground floor and cambered arched sashes on the first floor, all four-paned.

The Tea Rooms extend through the train shed wall on both sides with a two-storey four-bay spine block between one-storey parallel ranges. One-storey fronts have bowed and canted bay windows with square latticed transomed casements incorporating good Art Nouveau glass. Panelled parapet sits over bracketed eaves string. Bow windows to the Square front have domed caps surmounted by tall finials.

An original train shed windscreen of tiered arcaded lights survives at the end of the eastern aisle between the Tea Rooms and station hotel.

The former ticket hall interior has a roof of seven hammer beam trusses springing from corbel brackets and stiffened with ornate tie rods. A segment-arched opening with a garlanded keyblock leads to the concourse between segment-arched doorways with semicircular fanlights. In the clerestory over each arch are semicircular panels of brick or stone with stone voussoirs, keyblocks and hoodmoulds.

The concourse is enclosed on three sides by two-storey ranges except where bomb damaged. The central opening is segment-arched with pilaster responds and moulded imposts. Canted corner bays have doorways with pilaster jambs with foliate capitals beneath semicircular brick arches set with stone voussoirs and hoodmoulds with volute keyblocks. Ground floor openings, originally round-headed four-pane sash windows now mostly altered, are round-arched and recessed and tied with a moulded impost band. Above a moulded cornice, upper floor openings are blind sunk panels in moulded surrounds across the main range, with four-pane sashes beneath keyed cambered arches in the side ranges.

North of the central arch is a ceramic tiled map of the North Eastern Railway network in a moulded tile frame. The fourth side of the concourse is partly blocked by a two-storey Platform Signal Box and bookshop. The bookshop has sliding shop doors on the concourse side. The first floor is glazed with six-pane horizontal sliding sashes over moulded sunk panels and a moulded bracketed eaves cornice. On the concourse side is a clock in a pedimented timber surround beneath a voluted panel enclosing a roundel. On the platform side is a massive clock on an openwork S-shaped bracket incorporating foliage, white roses and the City of York arms, projecting over the footbridge.

The train shed is aisled in arcades of segmental arches springing from Composite columns also supporting transverse segment-arched trusses, the outer ends of which are carried on pilasters attached to outer walls. Arch spandrels are filled with heraldry set in foliage trails incorporating the Yorkshire rose. The inner side of walls is arcaded as on the outside. Brackets projecting from two columns and incorporating a foliated North Eastern Railway monogram now support television screens.

North and south extensions are roofed with braced trusses on twin colonnades of slim Corinthian columns with valanced canopies.