Here’s a question for you to think about. In 1935, when Victor ad Marjorie made their scouting visit to London to work out which properties to use, which of the four stations they picked was the busiest? Answer? Liverpool Street. How come? Well, actually, between the two world wars, Liverpool Street was the busiest station in the whole world.
Compared with Kings Cross and Fenchurch Street, Liverpool Street was a relative newcomer, first opening in 1874. If you’re wondering how it could be that the London North Eastern Railway ended up with all of these termini in Central London, well, none of them were actually built for the LNER. The LNER was only 14 years old when Vic and Marge first alighted at King’s Cross – previously the terminus of the Great Northern Railway. Liverpool Street was built as the terminus of the Great Eastern.
In his book, “Britain’s 100 best stations” journalist Sir Simon Jenkins, who served on the board of British Rail throughout the 1980s, described how Liverpool Street came close to being demolished in the 70s. It survived not least because of the energetic defence by the preservation movement, led by Sir John Betjeman, still smarting from the demolition of Euston Station, which led to a public enquiry in 1976 – 7.
Since then the station has been greatly redeveloped but sympathetically so. Every effort has been made to keep the character of the original station and has largely succeeded really well.
No comments:
Post a Comment