Platform, Platform Buildings And Bridge At Quainton Road Railway Station

341/0/10007 28-MAY-04

QUAINTON Platform, platform buildings and bridge at Quainton Road Railway Station

II

Platform buildings and connecting bridge. 1897 for the Metropolitan Railway.

Main 'Up' platform building. Brown brick with red brick dressings. Slate roof, with two brick stacks and glazed clerestorey. Long narrow plan of near-central booking office and waiting room flanked by smaller offices and with lavatories at either end, most rooms entered separately from outside. Roadside elevation with central door under projecting timber canopy with bargeboards, cantilevered off cast-iron brackets. Timber sash windows, with glazing bars to upper light, under arched brick heads to either side. Dentiled cornice, a motif repeated in the eaves at gable ends and in the chimney stacks. Similar windows in end elevation and on platform elevation. Glazed doors in broad glazed surround with glazed overlights to booking hall. Here there are also doors to two subsidiary offices and the Ladies' lavatory. Broad timber canopy the full length of the platform elevation. Sign and timber post for fire buckets, with water pump on platform nearby. Door to Gentlemen's lavatory under gable in east elevation.

Interiors. The booking hall retains dado matchboard panelling and timber panelled door, with fireplace and bench seating. Smaller office retains telecommunications equipment from mid-C20. Gentleman's lavatory has timber screens, slate stalls and clerestorey glazing.

Smaller 'Down' platform building of timber, with curved asphalt roof. Single waiting room, with central doors and symmetrically-placed four-light timber windows. The interior has exposed timber roof and bracing to walls. A fixed bench runs the full length of the waiting room. Because of its very modesty, this building is the rarer survival.

The buildings are linked by the brick-fronted platform, and a bridge of riveted cast-iron, that spans between brick piers and with lower balustrades of timber.

The ensemble is an exceptionally well preserved example of an 1890s railway station. It was one of four stations built by the Metropolitan Railway when in 1889 it took over the running of the Aylesbury and Buckingham Railway, founded in 1868, between Aylesbury and Verney Junction. It is the only one to survive. The station passed to London Underground in 1932 and thence to the London and North Eastern Railway in 1935. It closed to passengers in 1963 and to freight in 1966. Its lease to the Quainton Railway Society has ensured that it has survived in an exceptional state of preservation.