Wellingborough Railway Station

Wellingborough Railway Station

The main station building and canopy to platform 1 were designed by Charles Henry Driver for the Midland Railway and completed in 1857. Platforms 2 and 3 share a building and canopy dating from 1894. The site has undergone various alterations and additions over time, with modern structures added as recently as 2011.

The main station building is constructed of red brick with white and blue brick and sandstone dressings, beneath a slate roof with timber barge-boards. The platform and entrance canopies are of cast iron or steel covered in fibre-glass sheeting. The building on platforms 2 and 3 has red brick with a timber canopy on cast-iron brackets.

The main station range of 1857 is located on the west side of the railway line. It comprises a two-storey gabled cross-wing and a long single-storey gabled range, originally forming a T-plan, with late 19th-century additions to the north consisting of stepped lower gables, and late 19th and early 20th-century additions to the south including a passageway and goods office. A canopy oversails platform 1 on the east side. The platforms 2 and 3 range is a single-storey building of 1894 with a flat canopy.

The main station range has gable-ends with decorative pierced timber barge-boards and finials. The eaves feature dentils of white brick on a band of blue brick. Several brick chimney stacks have oversailing courses. The fenestration is characterised by distinctive round-headed windows fixed in timber frames with lozenge glazing or sashes. Those on the first floor have had their glazing replaced with metal louvres. The windows have hoodmoulds with banded blue-and-white-brick reveals finishing in decorative corbelled label-stops. Most windows are arranged in pairs, allowing the hoodmoulds to merge to a moulded sandstone mullion between them. The cills are sandstone and rest on corbels. The doorways have pointed-arch lintels with matching hoodmoulds and banded reveals. Above the windows of the single-storey range is a blind arcade formed of arches detailed in patterned blue and white brick.

The west-facing façade of the main station building comprises ten bays. The northernmost bay is blank but has been altered to accommodate a cash machine. The second bay has paired windows without the banded brickwork and with plain one-over-one sashes. The third bay steps forward to a gable-ended extension with a window, bracketed lamp and double doors with a transom light beneath the gable. The next bay is the gable end of the original cross-wing, featuring paired first-floor windows and tripartite ground-floor windows in a Venetian pattern. The attached single-storey block originally had six bays of paired windows in round-headed arches. The first bay has a gable-ended extension without bargeboard but with a reused arch and windows. The second, which originally projected to a porch, now has a casement window beneath a glazed ridge-and-furrow canopy of 1986. The third and sixth bays remain unaltered, while the fourth and fifth now have a single window. A former goods office, now a toilet block, is attached to the south of the main block and returns to the forecourt. It has round-headed six-over-six sash windows with white brick arches and blue brick hoodmoulds that carry between as a band-course. The south elevation, facing the pier of the footbridge, has simple six-over-one sashes with flat-arch lintels.

The platform elevation on the east shows, from north to south, a bay with altered door openings beneath a dormer; the gable-end of the cross-wing with tripartite windows, the central one being an altered doorway with a transom light and pointed-arch lintel; and a blind arcade of four bays, each with a pointed arch, white-and-blue-brick diaper, door and paired windows. A Victorian post-box is mounted on the pier between the first two arcade bays. The arcade was extended by two further bays in the late 19th century, the first of which was subsequently altered to incorporate a passageway to the forecourt. A final blank bay completes the elevation.

Extending from the northern two bays of the main station building is a 20th-century flat wooden canopy with a pointed valance on steel joists. The southern four bays have a ridge-and-furrow canopy of 1857, which was extended across the two adjacent bays in 1883. It features cast-iron columns with plinths and capitals beneath four-way brackets to decorative cast-iron spandrels with delicate pierced foliate work.

On the island forming platforms 2 and 3 is a red-brick building of 1894 with a blue-brick course below the lintels and a weather-boarded north elevation. The north and south elevations each have a timber door; the east and west elevations have doors and six-over-one casement windows. The building carries a flat wooden canopy with a pointed valance on decorative cast-iron spandrels with sandstone corbels. The south end of the canopy projects on two cast-iron columns.

The interior of the north end of the main station range, including the 1857 portion, contains plant for the cash machine, the former parcels office, the booking office, the entrance lobby and booking hall, and a café, arranged from north to south. These rooms have been altered but retain some original fixtures and fittings including four-panelled doors, door and window surrounds, cornices and skirting boards. The former parcels office has a partition with glazed joinery and a copper counter, probably dating from the early 20th century. The booking office, originally built as the Stationmaster's office, has been opened up to the adjacent booking hall with two round-headed openings and partitioned on the forecourt side for a staff kitchen and toilets. The booking hall has an open truss roof of iron beams and chamfered timber rafters.

The former goods office at the south end of the main station range was converted to a toilet block in 2011 and retains no visible surviving fixtures and fittings.

The southern room of the island platform building retains a fireplace with simple surround and dado with dado rail, wainscot and skirting board. The dado rail carries around as the top rail of integrated wooden benches with ramped arms and baluster legs.

An early 20th-century telegraph office stands to the north of the main station range. Across the tracks to the east is an early 20th-century former Permanent Way Inspector's office. At the south end of the station is a covered footbridge with a stepway and lift to each platform, built in 2011. These buildings and structures are excluded from the listing.

The modern palisade fencing to platforms 1 and 3, the 21st-century single-storey covered metal-and-glass shelters to platform 3 and outside the station, and the 20th and 21st-century platform signage, metal seating, lamp posts and bicycle storage racks are declared not to be of special architectural or historic interest. Internally, the plant for the cash machine, 20th or 21st-century suspended ceilings, partition walls, toilets and modern services within the main station range are similarly declared not to be of special architectural or historic interest.