The Victorian Era

How Was St Pancras Station Built?

Article · Architecture & Design · The Victorian Era, 1837–1901

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St Pancras Station is the most famous railway terminus in London, and one of the most famous in the world. The station was built between 1863 and 1868 by the Midland Railway to designs of the engineer William Henry Barlow, whose single-span iron train shed, 243 feet across and 100 feet high, was the largest in the world at the time of its completion. The station building and the adjoining Midland Grand Hotel, built between 1868 and 1876, were designed by George Gilbert Scott in a Ruskinian Gothic style of red brick and stone dressings. The history of the station is examined in Famous Victorian Buildings and Landmarks, and the broader context is set out in Victorian Architecture and Interior Design.

The Origins of the Station

The origins of St Pancras Station date to the early 1860s, when the Midland Railway, one of the great railway companies of the period, decided to extend its services to London. The Midland Railway had previously shared the facilities of the Great Northern Railway at King’s Cross, but the two companies fell out over running powers and the Midland decided to build its own terminus in central London. The chosen site was in St Pancras, in the northern suburbs of London, on a difficult parcel of land that was partly occupied by the crowded streets of Agar Town and bordered by the churchyard of St Pancras Old Church. The Midland acquired the site by Act of Parliament in 1864, cleared the slums of Agar Town, and began work on the new station.

The choice of a site with serious physical constraints — a swampy ground, a restricted footprint, a burial ground, and the need to build over the Fleet Sewer — led to a long dispute between the Midland’s engineer, W. H. Barlow, and its architect, George Gilbert Scott, over the design. Barlow wanted a single-span iron train shed on iron columns, with a clear span of 243 feet, then the largest in the world. Scott wanted a more conventional train shed of brick and timber, with the offices and the hotel set into the structure. The Midland’s board backed Barlow, and the iron train shed that was eventually built was very largely his design, with Scott retained to design the offices, the booking hall, the platforms, the train shed façade, and the Midland Grand Hotel.

William Henry Barlow

William Henry Barlow (1812–1902) was the engineer of St Pancras Station. Born in Woolwich, the son of a mathematician and a professor at the Royal Military Academy, Barlow trained as an engineer in the Royal Dockyard at Woolwich, served on the engineering staff of the London and Birmingham Railway, the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway, and the Midland Railway, and was appointed chief engineer of the Midland Railway in the 1850s. He was responsible for a number of important works, including the Midland’s line from Bedford to London, the tubular bridge at Smisby, and, his most famous work, the train shed of St Pancras Station.

Barlow was a brilliant engineer, equally at home in the design of bridges, tunnels, stations, and viaducts. He helped to complete the Clifton Suspension Bridge to the designs of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, and he served on the court of inquiry into the Tay Bridge disaster of 1879 and designed the replacement Tay Bridge, completed in 1887, that stands today. He was elected President of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1879 and was one of the most respected engineers of his generation.

George Gilbert Scott

George Gilbert Scott (1811–1878) was the architect of St Pancras Station. Born in Gawcott, Buckinghamshire, the son of a clergyman, Scott trained as an architect in the offices of James Edmeston and then of Henry Roberts, and was appointed Architect to the Midland Railway in 1860. He was the most prolific church architect of the Victorian period, designing some 800 buildings during his career, and he was the architect of the Albert Memorial, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Martyr’s Memorial at Oxford, and St Mary Abbots, Kensington, as well as the Midland Grand Hotel at St Pancras.

Scott was a brilliant, restless, and controversial architect. He worked in the Gothic, the Classical, the Italianate, the Renaissance, the Baroque, the Rococo, and the Modern styles, and he was a master of the architectural competition. He was the subject of a long-running debate about the restoration of medieval buildings, which culminated in the establishment of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings by William Morris in 1877, and he was eventually forced to resign from the office of the architect to the Dean and Chapter of Westminster Abbey. He died in 1878 and was buried in Westminster Abbey. The history of his style is examined in What is Gothic Revival architecture?.

The Construction of the Station

The St Pancras Station was constructed between 1863 and 1868 by a large team of engineers, contractors, and workmen. The foundations were sunk by means of steam-driven pile drivers, and the brick walls and the clock tower were built of brick, enriched with stone dressings, carving, and moulded ornament. The single-span iron roof of the train shed, the largest in the world at the time of its completion, was carried on wrought-iron ribs tied together beneath the platform deck; the undercroft below the platforms, originally intended for the storage of beer barrels brought down from the breweries of Burton upon Trent, was a remarkable example of the new constructive use of iron and brick.

The Midland Grand Hotel was constructed between 1868 and 1876 to the designs of George Gilbert Scott. The hotel was built of red brick with stone dressings, and it was enriched with carving, moulded ornament, and decorative ironwork. Behind its great curved façade the hotel contained a celebrated grand staircase, a sequence of public rooms including a coffee room, a dining room, a drawing room, and a smoking room, several hundred bedrooms, and extensive servants’ quarters. The hotel closed in 1935, was used as offices, and was restored and reopened as the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel in 2011.

The Station Today

The St Pancras Station is one of the most famous railway termini in London, and it is a Grade I listed building, a major tourist attraction, and a symbol of the London of the twenty-first century. The station is the London terminus of the Midland Main Line, the Thameslink route, the East Midlands Railway, and the Eurostar services to Paris, Brussels, and Amsterdam. The history of the building is examined in Famous Victorian Buildings and Landmarks, and the engineering of the period is examined in Victorian Engineering Marvels.