St Pancras International...new book

[caliwag]

Look out for a sumptuously illustrated new book on St Pancras, celebrating the revival.
On sale in Foyles on the station after 14th nov launch, called The Transformation of St Pancras station...by Alastair Lansley the lead architect.

Beautiful photographs by Paul Childs.

Not really an advert, just that I spent over seven years of my life on the project :shock:

 

[Nemesis]

Oh dear - and just when I promised that I really didn't need any more books, let alone railway architecture books... Amazon oneclick here I come!!


(I love it - apart from a certain sculpture... but when you are looking at that glorious train shed who notices it!!))

 

[plumbers mate]

Yes, it's gorgeous. However, I find it so dead at the platform level - all the life and bustle is downstairs eg booking office, departure lounge, bars etc. And the trains are in a glass security box. We were two out of only half a dozen living beings at that level a month ago. Downstairs was full of people. It would have looked so much more like a big international terminus with the trains below and the people above... after all, many stations are devoid of trains at times, but still have that exciting hustle and murmur of a departure and arrival area.
I think the statue of Sir John is really cute (more like Paddington Bear than a St Pan's icon!) unless you are referring to the lump of deformed, overscale, ugly bronze? With the price of scrap metal at the moment, they could make a pound or too by selling it?

 

[michael]

I saw the redeveloped St Pancras station for the first time at the weekend. Before I arrived I was anticipating something fantastic. With such a magical base building to work from how could it be anything else. However I have to say I was extremely disappointed. What has been done or more to the point what has been added is far too brutal particularly to a romantic building such as this with curves and artistic embellishments at every turn. It seems that a few of the tracks have been removed on its western side to reveal the under croft, now the ticketing halls etc and the steelwork of the main railway shed has been painted duck egg blue. I can’t decide whether the colour looks loud or insipid? I certainly dont think its appropriate for a building of that period. I’m also not keen on the ceiling and lighting panels in the undercroft. I think it would have looked far better if an attempt had been made to open up and uplight the original brickwork soffit rather than covering it over with bland cream plastic panels (no doubt conceiling ductwork and cabling) The scariest bit however is the new build, just one massive pour of grey concrete and totally inappropriate for this brickwork masterpiece. I took a walk through the underpass under the tracks adjacent to the new car parks; a dimly lit, bland, soleless no mans land, a mugger’s paradise. I thought they had stopped doing this sort of thing in the 1970’s. I eventually ended up in the nearby old St Pancras church a total solace from the modernist madness going on outside. Kings Cross & St Pancrass did need something doing to it but any elements of charm it might have had which could have been worked on and developed have been unashamedly ripped out. I to have to plead guilty as I unfortunately spent about a year of my life working on(not as an architect)the dreadful British Library building next door which to my eyes is a large brick bus station without any finesse at all and perhaps as bad if not worse than the bland concrete St Pancras station extension.

 

[Nemesis]

The blue was the original colour. As specified at the time by the architect.

I loved the whole thing. Magical.

 

[Gareth Hughes]

The blue was the original colour. As specified at the time by the architect.

I loved the whole thing. Magical.

Apart from the statue (not the one of St John of Bargeman...)

 

[Nemesis]

No, the Paul Day one.

But the train shed is wonderful. And not steel.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/portal/main.jhtml?xml=/portal/2007/11/14/fteurobrad114.xml

 

[Nigel Watts]

It remains to be seen how the still-being-refurbished hotel will relate to the train shed. Originally one entered and exited via the arches in George Gilbert Scott's building but the station entrance is now at the side, via the former cellars. Will one still be able to enter the old way way when all in finished?

When I visited a few months ago the old ticket office was still closed. This is a wonderful room, retaining its original gothic oak panelling and ticket windows, through which many years ago I remember the thrill of buying a proper train ticket (the small rectangular cardboard ones). I suppose this will end up as some kind of themed pub/winebar, like so many former banking halls in the city.

The best thing about the old St Pancras church round the back is Sir John Soane's tomb - a set of steps leading down to a sealed door. Most poetic.

 

[Nigel Watts]

As for the various underpasses etc north of the station being a mugger's paradise, this is not really much different from before, except that brick arches have been replaced by reinforced concrete ones. Goodsway, the street running under the St P tracks and over the K's C tracks, was for many years a notorious haunt of prostitutes and kerb crawllers and it was here that the former Solicitor General (or was it the DPP) was arrested for this very offence. The tarts were moved on some years ago. They then went a mile or so north to Market Road, site of the former London cattle market, and not far from where I live. I think they may have been moved on again as I have not spotted any recently (not that I take an interest in these things, you understand).

 

[plumbers mate]

> ""When I visited a few months ago the old ticket office was still closed. This is a wonderful room, retaining its original gothic oak panelling and ticket windows,""

When we were there last, a contractor had left the door ajar ... well, you'd have looked in as well, wouldn't you? It's a gorgeous space but it's difficult to see how it would fit into a C21st International Station. Sad if it's just left as a dusty museum space.
I believe that Barlow Blue paint is now available, so if you want a Barlow Blue house, you can.

Paint the garden shed with it and have a garden railway ...
OK I'm fantasising but if I had a garden, well ....

 

[michael]

As you walk northwards along the eastern side of the station shadowed and engulfed by the Grey concrete car parks and the bland railway structures that loom above, you eventually reach the junction of Goods Way and the dreaded no mans land underpass. Looking slightly north east from this point beyond the completely overwhelmed “nature reserve” (I can’t remember the name of the nature reserve, probably St Pancras) there is a group of charming and yet derelict Victorian yellow brick industrial buildings quaking in their boots as if awaiting demolition. I think they are probably accessed from York Way. What is to become of these? Also are the redundant gasworks to remain. They are certainly not pretty to look at but I understand there’s a preservation order on the ‘gasometer’. Why don’t we paint that duck egg blue as well? There also used to be a rather charming group of tenement buildings near this location regularly used in TV adverts and the likes of Mike Leigh films. I couldn’t see for the building work going on around me but are those tenements still there?

 

[Nemesis]

http://periodproperty.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=9452&hilit=Culross

http://periodproperty.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=7570&hilit=Culross

 

[Nigel Watts]

I think you will find that the nature reserve is called the Camley Street Natural Park and is run by the London Wildlife Trust. It is certainly worth a visit. It is also worth taking a walk along the adjacent Regent's canal. In spite of all the development both remain havens of calm, made all the more surprising and delightful by the choas, picturesque deriliction and concrete ugliness which surrounds them. When everything gets develped and smartened up, as it doubtless will, something will have been lost.