Stamford Town Railway Station Including Waiting Shelter, Footbridge And Two Stone Piers

Stamford Town Railway Station

This railway station was built in 1848 to designs by Sancton Wood for the Midland Railway. The complex includes a footbridge and waiting shelter dating to the late 1880s or 1890s, along with two stone piers.

The buildings are constructed from coursed and squared oolitic limestone rubble walls with ashlar dressings. The roofs are covered with Collyweston slates laid in diminishing courses.

The station occupies the north side of the rail tracks. It comprises a single-storey entrance hall with waiting rooms to the east, and a stationmaster's house of two storeys with an attic to the west. A waiting shelter stands opposite on the south side of the tracks, with a footbridge to the east.

The station is designed in the Tudor style with an asymmetrical, picturesque composition. Steeply pitched roofs with gable parapets are embellished with kneelers featuring roll and bird's beak mouldings. Tall clustered octagonal chimney stacks rise from stone bases.

The main north-facing approach features a three-bay loggia with segmental pointed arches supported by small round columns. A stepped diagonal buttress is positioned on the left. The crenelated parapet above is interrupted by three shallow gables pierced by arrow slit windows. The right arch has been infilled with glazing and a door.

To the left of the loggia is a single-storey range of former waiting rooms with gabled bays at each end. The left bay is recessed, the right projecting. Both are defined by closed, pointed segmental arches with blocked jambs and are lit by pointed arch windows with geometric glazing bar patterns incorporating Y-tracery. The right gable has a single window surrounded by a triangular gable with moulded kneelers. The left gable has a pair of windows and an arrow slit window above. A small lean-to with sloping crenelated parapet and a single pointed arch window adjoins these. Beyond extends a wall enclosing a small open yard providing access to the original WCs.

To the right of the loggia is the stationmaster's house, a projecting wide gabled bay with square uprights at the apex and ends, and a moulded string course at ground-floor level. The ground floor has a three-light mullion window with wooden glazing bars beneath a continuous hoodmould. The first floor is slightly recessed with a three-light mullion window set within a stepped square projection, flush with the ground floor. The attic is lit by a single window in a square surround.

To the right of the stationmaster's house is a lower one-and-a-half-storey range, possibly associated with the goods yard to the east. The single-storey front range has a pointed arch doorway within a gabled surround, followed by a 20th-century window and double-leaf vertical plank doors with long strap hinges. The west gable end has been rebuilt in brown brick. The taller element behind has a triangular gable to the right lit by a two-light mullion window. A tall brick chimney stack has been added to the right of the window. A small 20th-century lean-to extension of red brick with a slate-clad roof has been added to the gable end.

The south-facing platform elevation is complex. From the left is a small single-storey block under a hipped roof with a wide vertical plank sliding door, followed by a taller gabled bay lit by two windows in pointed arch surrounds with Y-tracery glazing bars. All ground-floor apertures along this elevation feature this design, except windows to the station itself (as opposed to the stationmaster's house) also have geometric glazing bars. Adjoining these areas, likely associated with the goods yard, is the stationmaster's house with window, door, window and door. The doors have glazed upper panels with Y-tracery. The gabled bay above is lit by a three-light mullion window, the attic by a single window in a square surround.

To the right is a single-storey range encompassing the former booking hall, lit by a window followed by a plank and batten door into the entrance hall, which is lit by another window. The present ticket office, possibly originally a waiting room, is defined by a triangular gable and lit by a window followed by a panelled door with Y-tracery above. To its right are a window and door to another waiting room. A canopy running the length of this section and the stationmaster's house, dating to 2016 or 2017, has cast iron columns supporting a ridge and furrow roof.

A further waiting room is housed within a projecting gabled bay lit by two windows. Adjacent is a square turret with a broached octagonal upper part with open sides and a conical roof surmounted by a weather vane bearing the letters 'SPR' for Syston and Peterborough Railway. To the right is a short parapeted range with a door to the former WCs lit by two windows. A stone buttressed wall with saddleback coping adjoins this, with a pair of chamfered square piers with pyramidal caps providing access to the platform.

The single-storey shelter on the south side of the tracks has a shallow pitched roof supported by cast iron columns, with canopies on both sides featuring swallow tail valences. Small waiting rooms at each end are timber-clad with vertical ribs and lit by two-light fixed windows with wooden glazing bars. Panelled doors have glazed upper panels.

The cast iron footbridge to the east has a gently curved span with lattice balusters and intermediate uprights. Straight flights of open steps have stick balusters forming delicate arches at the top, with square chamfered newel posts surmounted by domed finials. The bridge is supported at each end by four cast iron columns with octagonal bases featuring a chevron outline and stylised Corinthian columns. The bridge is stamped: 'T. Woodhall, Boiler, Bridge and Roofing Works, Dudley, England'.

The entrance hall has a canted ceiling with large moulded panels on the slopes. The original opening in the west wall to the booking office has been blocked and a new one made in the east wall into what is now the ticket office. The ticket office and waiting rooms to the east retain moulded wooden window and door surrounds, but fireplaces have been blocked and fitted furniture has not survived.

In the stationmaster's house, the principal ground-floor room has the same high canted ceiling as the entrance hall, indicating its original use as the booking office. The ground floor has been remodelled with removal of some walls and creation of new openings. The front room retains wooden shutters with panelling below and a moulded cornice. Elsewhere in the house, other than window and door surrounds and some four-panel doors, little original fixtures and fittings survive. Both staircases date to the 20th century, and all fireplaces have been blocked up.

Two square chamfered stone piers with pyramidal caps are located to the east of the footbridge on the north side of the tracks and to the north-west of the station.