20 CONTEXT 186 : DECEMBER 2025 would build a station today – perhaps because it is one – is unassuming (but Grade II listed) Micheldever, on the London to Southampton Railway. It resembles an early Victorian villa, but with canopies to all sides opening on to platforms on the railway side. It remains very similar to how it was built in 1840. The unremarkable everyday nature of Micheldever is perhaps what is so wonderful about railway heritage. It is these structures, these buildings, doing the same job for which they were designed, up to two centuries later. Brunel’s Great Western Railway, opened in stages from 1835, was designed with such foresight that trains are running at a frequency and speed that could not have been dreamt of in the early Victorian era. While the passenger railway continues in much the same way that it always has, the transport of goods has altered beyond recognition. I contributed to a book The Railway Goods Shed in England, published by English Heritage (still available for free download), and concluded that the railway goods shed must be added to that short list of buildings which are still plentiful, but not one still serves its original purpose, such as pillboxes. It is these types of structures that are most difficult to reuse creatively without them becoming museum objects or losing all sense of their original purpose. Much has been written about the very successful transformation of the Eastern Goods Yards at Kings Cross into a thriving mixed-use destination with a university at its core. What is great about it is the grain. The iron road imposed its linear grain across the country, but as the trains retracted (or in the case of Kings Cross, moved to the vast container ports at Felixstowe), how do you preserve that linearity long after the trains have departed? Stanton Williams’ superb University of the Arts conversion shows the way. Its Granary Building looms over a new public square, and the long transit sheds now house students and businesses, around a new concrete core where an internal street echoes the rigid geometry of the former sidings. South of the former goods yards, the grand stations of St Pancras and Kings Cross are heaving with people, carrying many times more passengers than were ever envisaged. When I worked on Kings Cross during my career at English Heritage and Historic England, what always struck me about McAslan’s western concourse extension was how it was a triumph not just for conservation but for logistics of pedestrian flows. There are two types of passenger at Kings Cross: the commuter who knows what platform their train leaves from and just wants to get through quickly, and the long-distance passenger who will arrive at least half an hour beforehand. They are offered a place on the mezzanine, where they can have a coffee and a seat in line with the departure boards before a graceful, curved bridge takes them through to Built in 1840, Micheldever Station resembles an early Victorian villa. (Photo: Simon Hickman) The University of the Arts successfully incorporates historic buildings of the Kings Cross goods yard. (Photo: Simon Hickman)
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