Former Joint Railway Station

The former Joint Railway Station in Chard was built in 1866 for the Bristol & Exeter and London & South Western Railways. It features Flemish bond brick with Bath stone dressings and a hipped slate roof with brick ridge stacks. The building is single storey and consists of five bays. The central bay, which is stepped forward and topped with a pediment that has a circular ornament, is flanked by deeply-recessed bays, each containing a door and a window. The outer bays are also slightly stepped forward, with one window between the quoins and a door at each end. All doors and windows are set in round arches with a platband at the impost level; the windows have bracketed sills and 20th-century six-pane fixed lights, while the doors have four panels. The shallow-pitched roof, which has a gable at the pediment, features wide tongued-and-grooved eaves on three sides, supported by cast-iron brackets resting on keystones of the openings in the recessed bays. This overhang creates a canopy or shelter. The interior has not been inspected. The station was built to serve the Chard and Taunton Line, which was taken over by the Great Western Railway in 1891, just before the broad gauge track was converted. The station is notable for combining one of Isambard Kingdom Brunel's extended hipped-roofed Italianate brick buildings with one of his wooden overall roofs for the shed, which has since been demolished.