Former St Mark’s Railway Station and adjoining Office and Platform

Former railway station and adjoining office and platform, constructed in 1846 to designs by W A Nicholson (1803-1853). The building is of gault brick with limestone dressings and slate roofs. It was closed in 1985 and converted into a shopping centre with the addition of a large brick extension to the south.

The building is roughly orientated east-west, with the principal former station frontage facing north onto Station Street. It is split into two elements: the former main station building fronting Station Street to the north and a much smaller adjoining office building fronting the High Street.

The former main station building is a single-storey structure with a thin plan of seventeen bays fronting Station Street, designed in a Neoclassical style. Rising from the hipped roof are four brick ridge stacks and two end wall stacks, all with corbel detailing.

The principal north elevation is symmetrically arranged with an ashlar limestone plinth and entablature running the length of the elevation. Late twentieth-century stone-paved brick ramps with metal handrails run up either side of the elevation to the three central bays, which break forward to form a portico supported on four pairs of Ionic columns on iron bases, mirrored on the elevation in pairs of ashlar pilasters. A flight of stone steps with metal handrails leads up to the portico from the north. Within the portico, the two outer bays contain doorways with moulded ashlar surrounds, while the central bay contains a six-over-six sash window within an ashlar architrave with cornice. To the east and west of the portico are four recessed bays, each containing a moulded ashlar opening with modillions and a cornice. Each contains a six-over-six timber sash window, apart from the two inner bays of the recessed section to the west of the portico, which are full-height openings with six-light sashes over nine-pane fixed windows. The three end bays to the east and west form pavilions with six Doric pilasters in ashlar, and three openings with ashlar surrounds with cornices. These are six-over-six timber sashes with the exception of the westernmost bay of the western pavilion, which is a six-pane sash over a nine-pane fixed window.

The stone plinth and entablature return onto the west elevation, which contains two six-over-six sash windows with gauged brickwork flat-arched heads and stone sills. The east elevation contains a six-panelled door with a fixed six-light window above, within a moulded ashlar surround. An additional bay adjoins the east elevation, added in the late twentieth-century and replicating the style of the ashlar and gault brick station building, with a fully glazed shopfront.

Adjoining the later easternmost bay of the main station building is a single-storey former office under a hipped roof. The north elevation is four bays wide, three containing late twentieth-century casement and fixed timber windows with moulded ashlar lintels and sills, and one containing a doorway with a moulded ashlar surround. The lower brick course projects to form a plinth and the two uppermost courses are corbelled out to form an eaves course.

Adjoining the eastern end of the north elevation is a curved brick wall with a stone cornice, possibly part of the former station's boundary wall. The east and south elevations have been substantially remodelled during the late twentieth-century. The east elevation contains a timber shopfront with a brick plinth and a stone cornice flanked by brick piers, above which runs a deep brick and stone parapet. The parapet returns onto the southern elevation, which contains part of a blocked-up window with a gauged brickwork head and stone sill.

Adjoining the station building to the east and the office to the south is a hipped-roofed single-storey extension forming a shopping centre constructed of gault brick with stone dressings. It replicates some of the Neoclassical motifs and railway architecture of the historic building.