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A new edition of Bradley's book tracing the history of St Pancras Station, introducing readers to the men behind the architecture, and looking at its international status. With new material and illustrations.
Synopsis
St Pancras station has long been an iconic landmark on the London landscape and one of its most distinctive monuments. This edition is published to coincide with the reopening of Scott's wondrous Gothic hotel. It traces the history of the station, introducing us to the men behind the architecture and looks at its new international status.
Book Details
Publisher:
PROFILE BOOKS
Publication Date:
17-Mar-2011
ISBN:
9781846684609
Guardian review
St Pancras Station by Simon Bradley review
the guardian Fri 08 April 2011
Part of the excellent Wonders of the World series, Bradley's history has been reissued with a new postscript to mark this year's reopening of the former Midland Grand Hotel, "the world's most spectacular Neo-Gothic hotel". Built from 1867-77 by the Midland Railway Company, this imposing edifice of red brick and stone is, writes Bradley, "the grandest single monument of the Gothic Revival in Britain". But St Pancras is really two buildings: George Gilbert Scott's beautiful hotel (which British Railways wanted to demolish in 1966), and the soaring train shed behind: the "greatest of High Victorian secular buildings". Designed by the engineer William Henry Barlow, it was once the tallest and the widest train shed in existence. Ian Nairn described this yawning space as "a vast throbbing hangar" and even today it remains awe-inspiring. The restoration (which cost nearly £1bn) gets the thumbs up from Bradley: it is "a project of the highest quality and intelligence". An authoritative and elegantly written biography of one of London's finest buildings.
