Temple Meads Station

Temple Meads Station is a railway station built between 1865 and 1878, with additional platforms constructed between 1930 and 1935. Designed by Sir Matthew Digby Wyatt for the Great Western Railway and Midland Railway, it originally operated as Bristol Joint Station. The building is constructed from conglomerate with limestone dressings.

The station's architectural style is Tudor Revival. The main building features a symmetrical crenellated front with lower, angled side blocks and a central two-stage tower, along with octagonal turrets at the corners. The ground floor has four-centred arches with banded Purbeck marble shafts, a label mould with quatrefoil spandrels, and 20th-century doors. The first floor contains six-light square-headed windows with transoms and cinquefoil heads, with stilted labels over panels featuring quatrefoils above the central window. A half-quatrefoil arcade runs below the parapet, with blind lancets within the merlons. The corner turrets feature two crenellated courses below pyramidal tops. The tower includes an arcade of engaged shafts passing through drip to pointed arches, a large square panel displaying a clock, and a trefoil-headed blind arcade above. The train shed screens feature mullion and transom windows separated by octagonal buttresses, with a glazed cast-iron canopy around the frontage.

The interior of the booking office comprises brickwork with octagonal tas-de-charges, but has a 20th-century concrete ceiling. A mezzanine level features a panelled ceiling and four-centre arched windows with four lights and intersecting tracery. The main train shed has a two-centred trussed roof with traceried arch braces on octagonal corbel shafts, with black diaper work under the eaves. The later platform buildings, added between 1930 and 1935 by P.E. Culverhouse, are constructed from cream terracotta and display the name BRISTOL in glazed letters.

Historically, the station was a joint venture between the Great Western Railway and the Midland Railway. The original tower had a steep French Empire roof, which was destroyed during the Second World War, and the turret tops were adorned with crockets. The station, along with Bristol Old Station, demonstrates the growth of a major railway terminus over more than a century.