St Pancras Station And Former Midland Grand Hotel

St Pancras Station and Former Midland Grand Hotel

This is a railway terminus and hotel comprising a train shed, terminus facilities and offices, ancillary buildings, taxi stand, and warehousing, including substructure and storage areas to the sides and rear, and structures to the forecourt. The station was built between 1865 and 1869, and the former Midland Grand Hotel between 1868 and 1876, both designed by George Gilbert Scott. The train shed was constructed between 1865 and 1868 by engineer William Henry Barlow. The building is constructed of deep red Gripper's patent Nottingham bricks with Ancaster stone dressings and shafts of grey and red Peterhead granite. The roofs are slated and were renewed in 1994 in carefully diminishing courses.

The building is a monumental, picturesquely composed Gothic Revival structure with 23 windows flanked by towers and a curved 10-window wing to the west. The exterior has four main storeys with two extra storeys in the roof lit by stacks of gabled dormers. The station is entered through two pointed, vaulted vehicle arches, flanked by pedestrian arches—one in the left-hand tower and one to the right. The arches feature recessed, elaborately patterned cast-iron pedestrian footbridges with cast-iron plate tracery windows on foliated cast-iron brackets.

The hotel facade has round-arched ground floor openings linked by impost bands. The second floor features pointed two-light windows with plate tracery and colonnettes. The third floor has cusped windows with colonnettes, and the fourth floor has arcaded windows of three lights. The facade is articulated vertically and horizontally with strings and much elaborate carving. A Lombard frieze runs below the balustraded parapet. The western curve is similar to the south elevation of the west range, with the section nearest Euston Road having an elaborate stepped gable over the right-hand entrance bay.

The south-east tower has a two-storey oriel, gabled clocks on each face with pinnacles at each corner, and a spire. The left-hand tower has three storeys of elaborately arcaded windows above the entrance with Lombard friezes and bartizans with spires at the angles. The mansard roof has gabled windows to the south and gables and chimneys on the other sides. The main hotel entrance is on the end of the curve to Euston Road and features an arcaded porte-cochère, above which are three cusped arches with small gabled roofs. A carved, stepped gable above the balustraded parapet is flanked by turrets with spires and gables over pointed windows.

The west return elevation along Midland Road begins with the first three bays reproducing the principal facade. After the first three bays, the long elevation angles back to follow the line of Midland Road with an 8-window range followed by a full-height stepped gabled range marking the line of the grand staircase. The former entrance from Midland Road is simplified: on the first floor level above three segmental arches filled with traceried windows is a tripartite light with stone tracery rising nearly to the top of the gable. This system of fenestration continues for one bay to the north, at which point the elevation begins to step down towards the ancillary railway buildings to the north. Four storeys over a basement terminate in a corbelled parapet, comprising six window ranges of two and three-light double-height windows. A three-storey polygonal wing is set between two-storey blocks, the block to the right having one window range and that to the left with a three-window range.

St Pancras Station is unusual in retaining a good deal of its related former warehousing facilities. These are concentrated to the north of the hotel along Midland Road and Pancras Road, located at and below track level. Although the elevation to Midland Road is quite varied, a consistent feature is the pointed blind arcade to the ground floor. Towards the Euston Road end there is a set-back which also has a blind pointed arcade, running for roughly 11 bays of the arched ground-floor structure. A more elaborate two-storey structure of 8 window ranges has a flat arched opening for vehicles consisting of a wrought-iron lintel set in the fifth window range. To either side of this entrance the pointed blind arcade continues. Continuing north along Midland Road, there is another carriageway entrance: a pointed arch with wooden doors and hinges of original design. There follow railway arches numbers 17 through 25. To the first floor of this range is a blind pointed arch arcade. Railway arches 14, 15, and 16 have been rebuilt. Railway arches 4 through 9 have received a first-floor brick addition.

On the Pancras Road elevation to the east, the hotel elevation continues the design of the main elevation for five window ranges, concluding in an octagonal turret. On the east flank of the train shed is a two-storey structure with a lean-to roof, numbered 9 to 91 Pancras Road. It is roofed in slate and on alternate bays there are stacks. This structure has a 45-window range and curves slightly at the north. The elevation of every bay is identical: on the ground floor a pointed segmental arch carried on plain piers rebated to accommodate attached columns, above which is a pointed arched window set in a shallow pointed recess. All the openings and recesses are linked by a carved impost. Many of the original shopfronts to the railway arches survive intact. Also surviving are carriageway arches to storage vaults under the station, originally for Burton beer, with double wooden doors with original ironwork, grilles, and hinges.

North of number 91, the elevation steps up to a tower with a blind arcade near the top. The substructure of the station continues northwards to the first railway bridge, the ground floor being articulated into bays pierced by pointed arches. This arrangement continues to number 111. There is an additional blind arch, formerly a carriageway, north of this. There are four rectangular chimneys on the parapet line of numbers 93 to 111. The original shopfronts have been altered, though the structure itself is intact. A drinking fountain comprises a gabled stone block with a granite eared and shouldered inscribed aedicule having a semicircular basin.

The station is approached by a dramatic ramp rising from the western end with an arcaded retaining wall having inset shops. The ramp is gained by steps from the eastern end with a pair of original iron gates at the foot and bollards.

The 25-bay train shed has a single 240-foot span in cast-iron arched braces manufactured by the Butterley Iron Company (dated 1867) and tied together by the floor girders of the station floor, which is effectively at first-floor level. The ribs are in the form of pointed arches and the whole structure is supported under the platform floor by a grid of iron columns; the structure of the space was determined by the module of the Burton beer barrel. A screen wall between the concourse and hotel has pointed arch, plate traceried windows which continue along the sides of the shed at the southern end.

The booking hall is rectangular in plan with six bays and double height. Linenfold panelling to ground floor level dates to the 1880s, as does the curving wood screen of the ticket office. Elaborately carved corbels serve as springers for former vaulting. The elevations of the booking hall on the north, south, east, and west are intact, that of greatest interest to the east since it features two double-height, glazed pointed arches with mullions and transoms in a glazing pattern of original design; this forms a screen wall between the booking hall and the platform. To the west, a decorative cast-iron glazed canopy serves the taxi rank, with a narrow exit under an arch to Midland Road. At the east of the concourse, the ladies' lavatories retain tiling and early 20th-century fittings.

The former hotel's painted decoration was begun late in 1872 by Frederick Sang at the suggestion of Scott. In December 1873 Sang was replaced by Gillow and Company, who were also supplying the furniture and fittings to the hotel. Andrew Benjamin Donaldson, a painter, oversaw the completion of the interior decorations for Gillow and himself painted the figures at the top of the grand staircase in 1876 to 1877. By the summer of 1877 the interiors were largely complete. The interiors were redecorated when electric light was installed between 1885 and 1889, the overseeing architects being Trubshaw and Towles. This affected most of the principal public rooms; the entrance hall from Euston Road and the lounge above did retain the painted decoration from the first half of the 1870s. The 500-bedroomed hotel closed in 1935 and was used as offices but has retained many original features, fixings, and fittings, including tiles in fine ecclesiastical Gothic and Queen Anne Revival styles.

There are several interiors of exceptional architectural interest. The entrance hall on Euston Road in the west wing and the ladies' saloon above are said to have been decorated by Frederick Sang. The saloon has arcaded paired columns, trabeated ceilings and other decorations, with a balcony over the entrance. The Grand Staircase, also in the west wing, is of stone supported on exposed and decorated cast-iron. It is set in a rib-vaulted well, the spandrels to the vaults filled with paintings of the virtues dressed in medieval and classicising garb, with the spandrel to the east depicting the arms of the Midland Railway (being consolidated and restored at the time of inspection in September 1994). The Coffee Room on the ground floor of the west wing has a crescent-shaped, square-ended plan. It was altered with an overlay of Classical ornament in the late 19th or possibly early 20th century, but many of the original elements survive, the cornices and ceilings protected behind later partitioning and false ceilings. The main staircase is the most dramatic space, the stone treads supported on exposed and expressed cast-iron beams.

St Pancras was the terminus of the Midland Railway and when built was the largest station roof in the world without internal supports. In terms of both architecture and engineering, it has claim to be Britain's most impressive station. The dramatic roof line with gables and spires forms an important landmark.