The stations of the London Brighton & South Coast Railway in the 1860s

From the outset Britain’s railway companies used talented and progressive architects. In the 1850s Brunel collaborated with Matthew Digby Wyatt and Owen Jones on Paddington Station. In the 1860s, the London Brighton & South Coast Railway employed the architect Charles Henry Driver, a master of cast iron and polychrome masonry detailing, to develop a unique and splendid ‘house style’ for the LB&SCR. In the 1870s top architects including Sir George Gilbert Scott and Charles Barry Jr designed exceptional railway buildings and into the 1880s the architect W N Ashbee produced a striking series of railway stations for the Great Eastern Railway with metalwork and station buildings influenced by the Aesthetic Movement.

This talk grows out of a ten-year project to restore Peckham Rye Station, a grand urban junction station designed by Charles Henry Driver FRIBA (1832-1900) for the LB&SCR.

Charles Driver was a highly original architect who developed a unique architectural style, immediately recognizable in railway stations, pumping stations and other modern Victorian building types. In addition to his work as an architect, Driver designed a broad range of decorative and architectural elements for the Saracen Iron works, perhaps Britain’s leading cast iron foundry. Through this work Driver became well known for his expertise in cast and wrought iron.

The directors of the London Brighton & South Coast Railway embraced Driver’s unique and powerful architectural ideas to create a wonderful family of stations across the South of England. Benedict’s work restoring Peckham Rye Station has researched the LB&SCR network to re-make lost architectural features, restoring the station’s roof and façade to its original Victorian splendour.

This talk tells the story of this restoration project, setting Driver’s work in the context of several other exciting Victorian railway architects.

Benedict O’Looney runs an architecture practice in south London, working on new build and conservation projects, particularly in Southwark, including the renovation of the Grade ll listed Peckham Rye Station for Network Rail and Southwark Council. Other recent work includes the new Purley Mosque, a new Women’s and Children’s Wing for the Croydon Mosque, the restoration of the Grade l listed Victorian Royal Bell Hotel in Bromley, and the restoration & re-opening of four railway arches at Findlater’s Corner, London Bridge Station for the Arches Company.

Since obtaining his Master of Architecture degree from Yale University, Benedict worked with Grimshaw and Alsop Architects, where his interest in new architecture in historic settings developed. He taught architecture history and sketching for 11 years at the Architectural Association, the Kent School of Architecture, the Canterbury School of Architecture, and New York University’s London program. He is chairman of Southwark’s Conservation Areas Advisory Group, on the Victorian Society’s Southern Building Committee and a past president of the London Sketch Club.