Victoria Railway Station: the former London, Brighton and South Coast Railway Station and rear Concourse

Victoria Railway Station: the former London, Brighton and South Coast Railway Station and rear Concourse

Railway station terminus built 1906-1908, designed by Sir Charles Morgan, Chief Engineer of the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway. The building represents an Imperial Baroque Revival interpretation of the French Renaissance style.

The main street elevation on Terminus Place faces nine storeys, with a two-storey ashlar basement. Five main storeys sit above two storeys obscured by a projecting iron and timber canopy, topped by two further attic storeys set within a mansard roof. The frontage measures nineteen bays wide, arranged in the pattern 3:5:3:5:3. The ashlar centrepiece and end pavilions project slightly forward. The plain sections of five windows are executed in red brick with stone bands and cornices. Windows are of two widths, either two-over-two-pane or three-over-three-pane sashes. The lower two floors beneath the canopy are supported on three posts at the front, with steel and glass roofs and timber valancing. Openings and shops at this level have been considerably altered in recent years. Above the canopy, floors progress with windows having keyed heads, then pedimented heads, then smaller keys, then plain architraves. The lower attic floor has pedimented heads with plain architraves above. The outer pavilions display large segmental pediments. The central attic feature contains bowed central windows and an elaborate broken pediment with a clock above, set against a tall French pavilion roof. End pavilions are topped with similar French roofs, with plain mansards between each, four tall stacks with weathered caps, and a further stack at each end. The clock is flanked by wreaths and female supporters reclining on the pediment scrolls. The rear wall cannot be seen except for two storeys of offices in red brick with stone bands within the concourse. The upper hotel floors are not exposed to external view.

Ground floor interiors have been altered. The railway offices on the first floor were not inspected. The upper floors contain approximately 150 bedrooms, bathrooms, and associated rooms forming part of the Grosvenor Hotel, which were not inspected.

The station concourse, also designed by Sir Charles Morgan in 1906-1908, features five ridged roofs running back at right angles to the building. These are supported on cast iron Corinthian columns and on the surrounding buildings. The columns support deep lattice girders running under each gutter, which in turn support light steel trusses. The roof originally extended over the platforms but was truncated in the 1990s and now covers only the head of each platform. Many late twentieth-century additions have been inserted into the concourse.

Victoria Station was originally built in 1860-1862 by the Victoria Station and Pimlico Railway Company, with capital subscribed by the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway (half), the London, Chatham and Dover Railway (one third), and the Great Western Railway (one sixth). The stations were designed as two separate facilities from their inception. The oldest surviving part is the eastern or Kent side, used by the London, Chatham and Dover Railway, which opened on 25 August 1862. This side was also used by the Great Western Railway in conjunction with the West London Extension Railway, connecting to the Great Western's main line at Old Oak Common via Battersea railway bridge, opened on 2 March 1863. The London, Chatham and Dover Railway station remained unchanged until after the company's amalgamation with the South Eastern Railway in 1899 to form the South Eastern and Chatham Railway.

The London, Brighton and South Coast Railway's half of the station first opened on 1 October 1860, designed by their engineer R Jacomb Hood. By the late nineteenth century this station had become extremely overcrowded. A much larger and better planned replacement was commissioned, designed by Chief Engineer Sir Charles Morgan. The new section along Buckingham Palace Road came into use first in 1906-1907, and the old station was then demolished, though the entrance canopy dated 1880 survives at Hove station. The completed new station was formally opened on 1 July 1908.

The rebuilding of the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway side inspired the South Eastern and Chatham Railway to respond with their own highly decorated new frontage, designed by Alfred W Blomfield. This fills the gap between the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway building and the original departure building of the London, Chatham and Dover Railway in Hudson's Place, constructed in 1909-1910.

The Victoria Station and Pimlico Railway Company remained nominally independent of its user companies until the Grouping, when both sides came within the Southern Railway. The Great Western Railway continued to have running powers into the eastern side, though their last services appear to have operated in 1915. The Southern Railway's first attempt at unification involved creating a double arched opening through the wall between the two stations in 1924-1925, after which platforms were numbered consecutively across the entire station as they are today.

Electric traction arrived at the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway station in 1909 with an overhead system. This was changed to third rail in 1929, and the system rapidly expanded under the Southern Railway, with the Brighton service being electrified in 1933. Electrification on the Kent side followed after the Grouping, with local commuter services to Orpington changed in 1925 and those to Gillingham and Maidstone in 1939. Full electrification of the lines to Dover and Thanet was not completed until 1959, while Platforms 1-8 were lengthened in 1960.

The Brighton side train shed and screen wall along Buckingham Palace Road have been rebuilt and replaced by office blocks over the tracks during major rebuilding undertaken in the 1980s and 1990s by British Rail. The Kent side, however, remains substantially as it was at Nationalisation in 1948, with war damage to the original London, Chatham and Dover Railway section never fully reinstated, though a new booking hall was provided in 1951.