Former Gwr Station

Former railway terminus, 1856, designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel for the Great Western Railway. Constructed by Messrs Hopkins and Roberts of Islington.

The building is L-shaped in plan and single storey throughout. The principal entrance building faces east onto Fisherton Street with a low pitched roof, whilst a long range aligned west-east extends at right angles.

The principal elevation, facing west, is rendered in Late Classical style. Red brick is used with stone dressings including quoins, plinth and string course. The central section of seven bays forms a symmetrical composition that breaks forward slightly. It is dominated by a central tripartite window with lights divided by stone strips and consoles to the sill, flanked by a doorway to either side. Each doorway has full height rusticated stone piers and is approached by shallow steps. The two outer windows to each side have stone surrounds carried through the plinth; those to the outer right hand bays have consoles to the sills. A canopy over the entrance was removed in the late twentieth century. The central section is flanked by recessed bays to either side with similar dressings. That to the left contains a round-headed archway leading to the former platform. The long range has been altered; its gable ends have been rebuilt and the roof appears to have been raised slightly. Its south elevation comprises ten square-headed windows, largely blocked except for the upper parts. Attached to the west end is a brick-built structure of mid to late twentieth-century date that supports a water tank; this building was lowered and its roof removed to accommodate the tank. The north return is fairly plain with blockings and inserted twentieth-century entrances with double doors. A lean-to canopy supported on vertical steel I-beams has been added. The rear elevation of the entrance building is largely devoid of features.

Windows are largely twentieth-century with a mix of metal and uPVC frames. Roofs are slate and corrugated sheeting.

A large train shed with wide span timber roof formerly stood to the rear (west) of the station building but was demolished in 1970, although the platforms remain.

Salisbury was slow to develop railway connections. The London and South Western Railway opened a branch line from Southampton in 1847, terminating at Milford on the eastern outskirts. A second LSWR line via Andover opened within ten years, also at Milford. Between 1856 and 1859 further lines arrived in Salisbury. The first, in 1856, was the Wiltshire, Somerset and Weymouth, an off-shoot of the Great Western Railway, which completed a single track line from Warminster to Salisbury using broad gauge track. Trains terminated at this new station at Fisherton, designed by Brunel, which included four tracks with two platforms and an all-over roof in typical GWR style, an engine shed and goods yard. In 1859 the Salisbury and Yeovil Railway Company built a second station just to the south west of the Great Western terminus; the London and South Western Railway moved to this new station at Fisherton shortly after. A footbridge connected the GWR terminus with the adjacent LSWR (later Southern Railway) station but was removed in 1956.

Following the extension of the Yeovil line to Exeter in 1860 and the conversion of the Warminster line from broad gauge to standard gauge in 1874, Salisbury became an important railway junction at the crossroads of two significant railway lines.

The terminus closed to passenger traffic in 1932 when Southern Railway trains began using the adjacent former LSWR station. It was then used as a goods station. Since the mid-twentieth century the tracks have been removed and the buildings have alternative uses.