Twickenham Station 1954

[Stephen Godden]

Does anybody know who designed the "new" Twickenham Station opened in 1954..? Looking at the pictures I have in a recently acquired album it looks very basic and "engineered".?

 

[Peter Mugridge]

It was probably someone, or a team, from within the Regional Architect Office rather than awarded to an external architect?

I have no idea how many were employed within that, or who they were though.

 

[Ian Hardy]

Don't forget that the original plan was for a station building like Richmond, however it never happened due to various factors including the Second World War.

Therefore after WW2, Twickenham ended up with the cheap corrogated iron covered shack at street level.

 

[stuving]

The new station was announced as early as 1927, and in 1931 enough existed that both stations were used to handle rugby crowds. But I can't see any reports of that being done again, or of why no new station was then built by the start of the war.

 

[Gloster]

Looking at Pryer’s track diagrams (Section 8) it seems that work would not really have started until after June 1938 as that was when the sidings on the Up side and East Signal Box, where the new station was to be built, were taken out of use. I would suspect that the basic style was due to it appearing at the time when the most important rebuildings of war damaged buildings were finished, but there still wasn’t the money available for stylish and elegant buildings.

 

[stuving]

The London Evening News of 14 February 1931 has a notice about extra trains from Waterloo to reach Twickenham for that afternoon's England-Ireland match. This included "Special arrangements have also been made for taking the crowds home after the match. Fast trains to Waterloo will leave the new Twickenham station, and trains calling at intermediate stations will go from the old station."

There is a 25" OS map dated 1935/36 that shows the access road to the new station in place (more or less as now). The Up side sidings have gone, and between the signal box and the nearest track is an outline that could well be a platform. That track runs round the outer side of the Up platform at the stations each side. I assume the platform was a simple, bare, improvised one.


So it looks as if some limited work and use of the site had started, though perhaps not as part of the new station design - which may not have existed then.