Victorian & Edwardian Railway Stations Re-appraised, by John Minnis

Connections: the smaller Victorian and Edwardian railway station re-appraised. A talk by John Minnis

This talk is part of the Online Autumn Talk Series 2023 called Railway Architecture and Society in the Victorian Society.

The tendency to study railway architecture on a company or regional basis has had the effect of obscuring all sorts of interesting connections between the buildings of different railway companies. Recent research has brought out many previously unnoticed similarities between railway buildings in different parts of the British Isles and, indeed, in Europe. It has identified many examples of identical or very similar designs of building being constructed for companies that were completely unrelated other than for their choice of engineer and has also given scope for a different interpretation of some well-known structures. This reappraisal builds on material presented to the Second International Early Main Line Railways Conference held at the National Railway Museum, York, in 2018 and subsequently published in the conference proceedings in 2019.

John Minnis FSA is a retired Senior Investigator with Historic England. He undertook a national assessment of signal boxes in association with the NRM and Network Rail. His published works on railway architecture include Southern Country Stations: South Eastern & Chatham Railway, Britain’s Lost Railways and The Railway Goods Shed and Warehouse in England. Other books have included (as co-author), Carscapes: The Motor Car, Architecture and Landscape in England, England’s Motoring Heritage from the Air, Religion and Place in Leeds and Boston, Lincolnshire.

All attendees will be sent a recording of the talk.

This event helps raise funds for The Victorian Society - the only charity dedicated to fighting for our Victorian and Edwardian heritage. Funds raised from events and memberships allow us to employ expert caseworkers to reply to thousands of planning applications a year in our role as a statutory consultee in the planning system.

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