Brighton Station Including Train Sheds

Brighton Station including Train Sheds

A railway station of major importance, combining work from three distinct periods. The original station of 1841, designed by David Mocatta, survives in part as the forebuilding. The platforms were enlarged and extended in 1852 to 1854. The train sheds and front canopy, both dating from 1882 to 1883, were designed by HE Wallis.

The original forebuilding, now largely stuccoed, is Italianate in character. It comprises a 15-window range of 2 and 3 storeys, with a 3-window addition to the west. The ground floor has been simplified to a flat stuccoed front with round-arched openings, though the western addition retains 19th-century round-arched metal glazing bars. The first floor displays flat-arched windows with moulded stucco architraves and alternating triangular and segmental pediments. The wings feature long-and-short quoins. The original building retains a modillion cornice and an attic storey with flat-arched architraved windows between pilasters and a balustraded parapet, except for a later central clock set in a giant foliate moulding.

The 1852 to 1854 enlargements comprise additions in yellow and brown brick in English and Flemish bonds with red brick dressings and some timber. The train sheds are constructed of cast and wrought iron with roofs of glass and timber.

The cast-iron canopy in front of the station is the most visually distinctive element. It contains 7 equal bays running west to east, plus a further longer bay, arranged in a configuration that presents one gable end to Terminus Road and two to Queen's Road. The first two bays from the west are one bay deep from north to south; the remainder is two bays deep. The roof is pitched. Cast-iron columns, fluted in their lower portions and resting on octagonal bases, are topped with arcaded capitals. Spandrel brackets are decorated with sexfoils. The light trusses between bays feature openwork decoration and Brighton dolphins at their apex. Wrought-iron scrolling friezes run along the outer faces. Three cast-iron columns flank the traffic entrances to Queen's Road.

The train shed follows a slight curve and is 2.5 bays wide from east to west and 21 bays long from north to south in the principal bays. The half-bay on the east side is 12 bays long, narrowing to its northern end. A shallow extension of 9 bays runs southward on the west side, with 10 bays to the north featuring a screen wall of yellow brick with blank arcading. The cast-iron columns are quatrefoil in plan on octagonal bases with fluted capitals. They are stamped "Patent Shaft and Axletree Co 1882 Wednesbury". North-south spandrels are filled with openwork decorated with Brighton dolphins. Main trusses form segmental curves beneath pitched roofs with scissor-trusses between.

East of the forebuildings is a range of mainly single-storey buildings in yellow brick with red-brick dressings, featuring round-arched and segmental openings. The southern end has 7 openings; the northern end has 12. Flanking piers, cornices and parapets frame these openings. A wooden first-floor addition sits above the northern end.

The return frontage onto Terminus Road, probably largely designed by HE Wallis in 1882, is built of yellow brick laid in English bond with red brick dressing. This comprises three stages: a 2-storey range of 13 windows divided into 5 bays with ground-floor openings (now much altered) and first-floor windows in groups of 2 and 3 with stepped segmental arches in gauged red brick, topped with a stepped red brick parapet; a single-storey range of 4 bays windowed similarly with stacks rising from piers; and a screen wall of 4 bays divided by a red brick cornice. The wall is largely rebuilt north of this point.

The building is constructed on a steep slope from east to west. Underbuildings in Trafalgar Street and on the east side are in brown brick with red brick dressings. The easternmost range of the station forecourt buildings, also designed by HE Wallis in 1882, is carried over the yard on cast-iron columns with decorative openwork brackets.

David Mocatta, architect to the London and Brighton Railway Company, designed many stations and bridges along the London-to-Brighton line.