Liverpool St Station In The 20th Century & Beyond
John Betjeman on Liverpool St Station c1961, photograph by David Sim
If you have not yet objected to the monstrous block they want to plonk on top of Liverpool St St Station, the deadline is 4th July.
When I wrote a week ago there were only 180 objections versus 613 comments in favour but – thanks to you the readers of Spitalfields Life – there are now 623 objections versus 659 comments in favour. This is astonishing progress.
Yet if we are to stop this appalling development, we have to far surpass those comments in favour and we have until next Friday to do this. Please encourage your friends, family, neighbours and colleagues to object.
CLICK HERE TO LEARN HOW TO OBJECT EFFECTIVELY
This is the Liverpool St Station of living memory – the station as I first knew it – recorded in these splendid photographs from the collection of the Bishopsgate Institute.
A vital transport hub through two world wars and, most significantly, the point of arrival for the Kindertransport, children fleeing nazi Germany, this is the station that John Betjeman fought to save, winning a landmark conservation battle which gave us the sensitively restored station of recent years.
At the end of this post, I append my photographs of the beautiful station as we know it today with its luminous marble floor refracting the morning light from the lancet windows high above.
Glass was removed from the roof in World War II
Photograph by Malcolm Tremain
Photograph by David Johnston
Photograph by David Johnston
Photograph by David Johnston
Photograph by David Johnston
Photograph by The Gentle Author
Photograph by The Gentle Author
Photograph by The Gentle Author
Photograph by The Gentle Author
Photographs courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
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When I was a teenager in the 1970s we used to travel up from Romford to London to early punk rock gigs and soul clubs like the Global Village in Charing Cross. The last train to Romford from was at 1.27am and we often got to Liverpool St after 2.00am and had to hang around till ‘the milk train’ left around 4.00am. I seem to remember there was a booth where you could pay 50p or a pound and produce a 7 inch vinyl record on the platform. It’s a hazy memory and I have no physical evidence of the disc me and my mates produced. Can anyone else remember such a thing existing at the station.
Another here who used Liverpool St Station in the 1970s – to meet my friends off their train from Southend to go to Global Village and clubs around Soho. I also used to commute to the station on the tube. I don’t remember the record making place but I do remember my friend making me late every day as she got addicted to playing on the new Space Invaders machine that was installed – must gave been around 1977/8 – does anyone remember the Space Invaders machines being there?
I was thrilled later in life to see the station in the film The Elephant Man staring John Hurt.
Many years on and many moves around London, Liverpool Street Station is still somewhere I travel through and from often. It is the only building left standing from my working life – every single office I have worked in, in the City of London, has been knocked down and replaced – and I worked in a lot of them. Progress? Not so sure.
I hope it doesn’t get consumed by the latest crazy plans for it.
I’ve sent my objection in & got an acknowledgement
Please … everybody … do the same?
Re: Martin’s memory.
Like yours, hazy but I reckon there was circa 1977-80, when I used the station frequently for gigs and Merchant Navy pool offices in Aldgate East
Remember the early train back to Cambridge in Aug 79 a freezing night spent on a bench after my car was nicked from Wembley Stadium multi story after a Stranglers and The Who concert. Miserable sod loading train with Sunday rags, wouldn’t even sell me an Observer! Many fond memories of Liverpool Street. Fab pics, took me right back! especially the colour pics.
I used to love the old fashioned indicator boards at the front of the platforms in Liverpool Street. When I moved to London in the early 80s there used to be little side turnings with restaurants and cafés in them where we’d go for lunch if we weren’t going to Leadenhall Market (I worked opposite the market entrance on Gracechurch Street). When they modernised the station and built the Broadgate Centre it lost a lot of its character but that’s progress for you.
Definitely must be saved!
Make that 624…
My experiences of Liverpool Street Station are more recent, but it is without a doubt my favourite railway station in London. Access can be tricky if arriving by taxi with more than a single rolling case, but it doesn’t require destroying the fabric of the station to fix that! And if you’ve never spent a summer hour in the gardens behind the train sheds, you’re missing something special.
Thank you for the reminder, G.A.
Thankfully many of the comments in favour of this hideous development don’t appear to be compliant so may be rejected. But the case against will certainly be strengthened if as many people as possible object.