Let’s not be short-sighted about the lasting value of historical architecture, says our editor-at-large
Growing up, my local railway station, Harlington, was a slightly shabby Victorian station on the Bedpan line from where I could take the train to Bedford or Luton, or as far as London. The London terminus was a dark and dank place, blackened by train soot and city grime, the hideout of criminals and prostitutes. By the time my parents had taken me to London for my eighth birthday, the building had been scheduled for demolition. At that age, I of course could not have cared less for the place – St Pancras station (stpancras.com) was run-down, broken and no doubt a little threatening.
Not many people wanted to save it despite civil engineer William Barlow’s great cast-iron arched roof – the largest in the world at its construction in the mid-19th century – and despite the Gothic hotel that fronted it, designed by eminent architect Sir George Gilbert Scott in 1865. The taste for Victorian buildings in the 1960s was a sour one, not least because the maintenance of all buildings during the mid-20th century was pincered by the economic impact of two World Wars and because highly decorated, complex ones took more looking after than most. Added to that, very little London architecture looked appealing in the 1960s before the wholesale clean-up of buildings as a result of the Clean Air Act.
So, the future of St Pancras looked bleak. Until the poet-laureate Sir John Betjeman spearheaded a campaign to get the station listed as a Grade I building. He succeeded, just days before demolition was about to begin.
Today the building is cleaned, restored and home to the Eurostar (eurostar.com). It is the gateway to London and the first impression that many Europeans have upon entering the UK. It would now be unthinkable to demolish such an architectural and engineering jewel, representative of the heights of mid-19th century design excellence.
The story of St Pancras teaches me a few lessons. First, that it’s hard to understand the value of an old structure when it is down-at-heel, dirty and in need of investment and repair; harder still sometimes to recognise the quality of design and construction. Second, it is even more difficult when that building dates from a time too close to our own – in the 1960s, St Pancras was not even 100 years old. Third, the agenda of developers to renew a place and deliver jobs and economic benefits through its ‘regeneration’, can easily cloud the judgement of those in power. Fo
