Welshpool Railway Station Buildings

The Welshpool Railway Station Buildings were constructed between 1859 and 1860 and designed by Benjamin Piercy as the headquarters for the Oswestry and Newtown Railway. The building's function as headquarters was brief, lasting from 1860 to 1862. Following the realignment of the railway and the reuse of its original line as a bypass around 1990, the building ceased to be used as a railway station.

The station is built in a French Renaissance style, exhibiting symmetrical composition. It is constructed primarily of brick with stone dressings and a renewed slate roof, featuring scallop tiled bands. Axial stacks are present. Pavilion towers flank an 8-window, two-storey main range. The main range has high paired central gables, with lower, hipped-roofed, and plain gables to the sides. The outer gables contain 2 and 3-light wood mullioned and transomed windows, and similar paired windows are positioned beneath the central gables. A stone plaque bearing the Prince of Wales feathers is set into the first floor between these windows. The ground floor features a central entrance, flanked to the left by paired doorways and to the right by a single doorway, with 2-light wood mullioned and transomed windows. All doorways have steeply arched tops with foliate decoration carved within the spandrels. A shallow canopy roof, supported by brackets, projects over the ground floor. The pavilion towers are two-storeyed with attics and hipped roofs surmounted by cast iron brattishing. The left-hand tower features a doorway and a 2-light window on the ground floor, with paired windows above, and a steep gabled dormer with traceried mullioned lights to the top storey. The right-hand tower has a stepped stone mullioned and transomed window illuminating the staircase, with a steep gabled dormer above containing traceried mullioned lights. The platform side exhibits similar detailing in doors and windows, alongside a deep canopy supported by arcaded cast ironwork (from the foundry of S. Morris, Welshpool), with 21 posts carrying pointed arched bracing with quatrefoils in the spandrels.

This is a lavishly designed and detailed station, reflecting its original role as the Railway Company’s headquarters, and it is a prominent feature of the approach to Welshpool from the east.