Broxbourne Railway Station and Signal Box

Broxbourne Railway Station and Signal Box

A railway station and signal box built in 1959–1961, designed by H H Powell of British Railways Eastern Region Architects' Department. The buildings are constructed in a Brutalist architectural style using reinforced concrete with stock brick infill, and feature distinctive dark purple brick towers.

The station comprises a rectangular single-storey entrance and ticket hall positioned to the west of the tracks, opening into a double-height glazed entrance hall. From here, an enclosed footbridge extends eastwards in a straight line across four railway tracks, with platform canopies extending northwards from the footbridge on the platforms themselves. All roofs are flat. The horizontal emphasis of the footbridge is created by its exposed concrete frame and blind brick wall, while three purple brick lift towers rise prominently above the flat roof. A square single-storey block is attached to the north side of the ticket hall, featuring small horizontal slit windows.

Internally, the entrance hall has a quarry-tiled floor and a turning floating concrete staircase with moulded hardwood handrails mounted on steel supports. The footbridge is also floored with quarry tiles and lined with hardwood handrails and hardwood-clad ceilings, with glazing to the north side. Brick-built spaces within the footbridge accommodate a newsagent, lavatories, and lifts. Glazed staircases with hardwood ceiling-cladding and handrails descend from the north side to covered platforms, which also have hardwood ceiling-cladding. The platform canopies feature flat roofs and hardwood timber cladding to their undersides, supported on brick piers.

The signal box is a rectangular building constructed from stock brick and concrete, oriented north to south alongside the track. Its lower storey has an exposed concrete frame in similar style to the main station, with three small windows in the west elevation and a window and door in the south elevation; the ground-floor windows have been replaced with early 21st-century uPVC. The upper storey contains a glazed signal room with a deep cantilevered canopy roof, and a cantilevered railed inspection walkway surrounds the signal room externally. Internally, the signal box retains its original staircase with hardwood handrails. The signal room houses the NX panel with buttons and phone fittings, though the diagram panels depicting lines and train positions have been removed. Original fitted cupboards and a small tiled partition remain. The ground floor preserves its original office plan opening from a side corridor, though the decommissioned banks of switches have been enclosed with board partitions.

Throughout both buildings, hardwood handrails and ceiling cladding are employed internally, and the design exemplifies mid-twentieth-century railway modernism and functional design.