Midland Railway Station

Midland Railway Station, Nottingham

Railway station built in 1904 by architects AE Lambert and Charles Trubshaw for the Midland Railway Company. The station is constructed of red brick, terracotta and faience (glazed terracotta) with slate and glazed pitch roofs. It is designed in the Neo-Baroque style.

The station complex comprises a frontage forming a porte-cochere, booking hall and offices, platform buildings, overbridges, and Transport Police offices. The main frontage and booking hall span the tracks and are linked to the platforms by stairs and lifts. Covered overbridges and stairs link the platforms.

The exterior frontage features a plinth, dentillated cornice, balustrade and rusticated columns. Windows have cornices or pediments in Gibbs surrounds, and pedimented doorways. The carriage entrances have good Art Nouveau wrought-iron gates. The symmetrical front elevation is single storey with 9 bays and has a central domed clock tower of 2 stages, with paired Tuscan columns and pedimented windows. A round-arched doorway is flanked by single windows, followed by elliptical arched carriage entrances with enriched pediments. Further bays have 3 windows and additional carriage entrances with flat gables. The end bays contain a window to the left and door to the right. The returns feature pedimented carriage entrances flanked by round arches. The right return has an attached boundary railing with square gate piers. The porte cochere has a glazed iron truss roof. To the right stands the police office, a domestic style 2-storey building on an L-plan. Attached to its left return is a wooden cabmens' shelter with extensive glazing and a lean-to tile roof. Towards the rear of the complex, fronting Station Street, is Forward House, the former parcels office.

The booking hall exterior displays polychrome bands and Baroque detail, with 3 round-arched openings flanked by doorways and wider arched openings beyond. Above are 5 round windows.

The interior of the booking hall features glazed tiles, paired Doric pilasters, round-arched openings and round windows. It has a coffered ceiling with a central glazed barrel vault and Diocletian end windows. At the rear is a covered footway spanning the tracks, with a staircase and lift tower at each end. Platforms 1-5 have mainly single storey buildings with Baroque detailing and round-arched openings with fanlights. On platform 2/3 stands a 2-storey block of 10 bays. Continuous canopies with renewed sheet steel roofs and wooden valances are carried on riveted lattice girders and cantilever brackets. Riveted steel stanchions have cast-iron bases. A footbridge spanning platforms and tracks features a glazed cross-braced structure and roof. The platform buildings retain most of their original detail. The interior of the buffet on platform 4/5 contains original terracotta ornament, painted over, including pilasters, a chimneypiece and coved ceiling.

This was the third Midland Station to be built in Nottingham. It was constructed in response to competition from the Great Central Railway and the facilities provided by its grand Victoria Station, which opened in 1861 and is now demolished. At a cost of approximately £1 million, the station opened to the public on 17 January 1904, although final completion was not reached until later that year.

The station represents an important and outstanding complex of railway station buildings and structures. It has survived exceptionally well. The high quality of its Neo-Baroque architecture, which is rare among English railway stations, and the significance of American influence on its design—being the first railway station to exhibit such influence—add extra importance and place it as a building of outstanding national significance.