Rainhill Railway Station including associated boundary walls, step-retaining walls, western footbridge, and signal box, Rainhill, St. Helens

Summary

A railway station of around 1860 with waiting shelter and western footbridge of around 1880 and signal box of 1896, built by the London and North Western Railway on the original Liverpool & Manchester Railway line.

Only the main building (including stone-flagged area beneath the canopy), the north platform waiting shelter, the western footbridge, the boundary walls and steps, and the signal box are included in the listing. The platforms themselves and the eastern footbridge are excluded from the listing.

Description

A railway station of around 1860 with waiting shelter and western footbridge of around 1880 and signal box of 1896, built by the London and North Western Railway.

MATERIALS: red brick, buff sandstone dressings, Welsh slate roof, cast-iron rainwater goods and canopy, red sandstone boundary walls and copings, iron footbridge, timber weatherboarding to signal box.

PLAN: C-plan main building on the south platform with waiting shelter opposite, footbridge to the west, and signal box 200m to the east, north of the line.

Main station building
EXTERIOR: built in a classical style and of a single storey with hipped slate roofs, a deep modillioned eaves with billeted fascia, and a canopy around the north, east and west sides, the building stands to the north of station road.

There are moulded sandstone window and door surrounds and sill-band throughout the north, east and west walls. The main platform elevation is of three bays, the end bays projecting slightly. At the left is a corniced ridge chimney-stack of stone and brick. The left bay has three 2-over-2 sashes (the centre one shorter), the central bay a 3-over-3 sash, a 2-over-2 sash, door, two 3-over-3 sashes, a sealed door and an alcove, and the right bay has a sealed door. Square cast-iron columns support the canopy forming a nine-bay arcade to the platform, with decorative iron brackets and billeted fascia. The soffit is timber-boarded, with arched spandrels running from the columns to the walls.

The west end has a window and two sealed former toilet doorways. The east end has the main entrance (with replaced stone surround) to the ticket hall and waiting room, with a 2-over-2 sash to the left of the door.

The south (rear) has two chimney stacks through the roof towards the right and a doorway towards the left, leading into the western part of building. To the left of the door are two sash windows and to the right three more (a mix of 1-over-1, 2-over-2 and 3-over-3 panes), all openings with sandstone wedge lintels.

INTERIOR: the ticket office and waiting room have original fielded four-panel doors (with C20 replaced hinges and handles), architraves, plain cornice, dado rail and panelled dado (some replaced), skirting, and inserted late-C20 lighting and seating. In the western offices the original decorative moulded cornice survives above a suspended ceiling in the first room (probably station master's office or first-class waiting room), together with a chimney breast (fireplace removed). The window to the platform is sealed, and there is an opening cut through the west wall. The larger room is partitioned, with the doorway leading to the platform sealed. The former toilets at the west end have two sealed doorways.

Waiting Shelter (north platform)
This has a brick back wall with four corbelled recessed panels, timber walls to either end, hipped slate roof and an open front with five square cast-iron support columns carrying ceiling beams with shaped cantilevered ends. The plain fascia is a replacement.

Western Footbridge
A flat, lattice-girder bridge supported on brick pillars, with eastern flights of steps to the north and south end, all with lattice balustrades. Both flights of steps have extensions* at the foot supported on brick, added modern handrails* and glazed balustrade extensions*. The northern flight and the span have arched overthrows formerly supporting a roof. The span also has glazed balustrade extensions*. The step and deck surfaces* are modern. The piers are of common brick and have corner pilasters and an arched recess to each face, with sandstone impost band and fair-faced brick arch. Seven courses of lighter brick have been added, supporting the original sandstone caps.

Signal Box
EXTERIOR: the signal box is of two storeys and three bays, the ridge line being parallel to the railway line adjacent to the south. The brick ground floor (the locking room) has three small, segmentally-arched windows on the south side, two to the north and one to the east end, the west end having a boarded door. The first floor (the operating room) is continuously glazed on the south side with original pattern small-pane glazing incorporating two horizontally-sliding four-pane sashes. The east gable also retains original pattern glazing including a further horizontally-sliding sash. The west end has replacement uPVC window* and door* and modern external staircase* and small projecting toilet extension*. The gables have plain bargeboards and retain spiked finials.

INTERIOR: this retains its 1896 lever frame for 25 levers, still retaining twelve LNWR levers, with two additional levers. The operating room has an inserted suspended ceiling.

SUBSIDIARY ITEMS: the platform beneath the canopy of the main building is stone-flagged. A sandstone retaining wall borders the station to the south, with a boundary wall to the north (both of squared rubble), and two flights of steps from station road are retained by brick walls, all with stone copings, and modern railings*.

* Pursuant to s1 (5A) of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 (‘the Act’) it is declared that: the platforms and their modern surfacing, the eastern footbridge, the stair extensions, modern handrails, glazed balustrade extensions and modern step and deck surfaces to the western footbridge, the replacement uPVC window and door and modern external staircase and small projecting toilet extension at the west end of the signal box, and the modern railings to the boundary walls and steps, are not of special architectural or historic interest. However, any works which have the potential to affect the character of the listed building as a building of special architectural or historic interest may still require listed building consent and this is a matter for the local planning authority to determine.

History

The Liverpool and Manchester Railway (later subsumed into the Grand Junction Railway and then in 1846 into the London and North Western Railway – LNWR) was opened on 15 September 1830 and was the first intercity passenger railway in the world. One year previously locomotive trials had been held on the line at Rainhill to test the viability of using steam locomotives for the railway, and a grandstand was erected at Rainhill for people to watch the trials. The winning of the trials by George Stephenson’s Rocket on 8 October 1829 was a pivotal event in the establishment of modern-style mainline railways not just in England, but internationally.

The 1830 railway station at Rainhill was originally named Kendrick’s Cross and was located approximately 100m east of the current station building, due north of the road junction where this medieval cross base still stands. It is thought to have been very primitive, probably with no proper platform and comprising just a covered shelter and level crossing. Although initially level crossings were preferred for pedestrian use, lineside or platform-to-platform footbridges were built at stations from the 1850s with construction accelerating in the 1870s. From around 1880 railway companies evolved their own individual designs of more-or-less prefabricated footbridges.

As passenger numbers grew, a larger station at Rainhill with suitable platforms was required. Consequently, the current station was constructed around 1860, together with a stationmaster’s house and a waiting shelter on the north platform (a LNWR map dated 1868 depicts the station already in situ). After construction of the new station the ancient, but small, settlement of Rainhill grew rapidly.

By around 1880 the station had been expanded with sidings (overlooked and controlled from a signal box on the approach from the east) to a coal yard, goods shed and Rainhill’s gas and waterworks, as well as a replacement north platform waiting shelter and footbridges to the east and west of the station, to variations of standard LNWR design (the eastern bridge is not included in the listing). The western footbridge was approached by a ramp from station road, as well as by its flights of steps.

In 1896 an earlier signal box was replaced immediately to its west by the LNWR to their Type 4 design. The Type 4 design used modular components which were prefabricated at the LNWR’s Crewe works and could be built in varying sizes from single-bayed huts up to the enormous six-bayed, three-storey example at Shrewsbury Severn Bridge Junction (National Heritage List for England – NHLE – entry 1271480). The Rainhill signal box is the most common size and format of the Type 4 design, with hundreds of this size built between 1876 and 1904, but is the last survivor of over 70 signal boxes built on the course of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway.

The southern sidings and stationmaster’s house were removed during or shortly after the Second World War; the coal yard remained in place in 1963, but the lines were lifted by 1972, and the goods shed was demolished between 1978 and 1991. The ramp approach to the western footbridge was removed in the late 1960s, and in the 1970s the overhanging roofline of the north platform shelter was set back to the beam ends and the original fascia (matching the main station) replaced with a flat fascia board. The western part of the station building was partitioned and converted for office space in the late C20. The square brick piers supporting the western footbridge were raised when the line was electrified, and its flights of steps slightly extended as a result. Additions have also been made to its original lattice balustrades and handrails, and its timber deck and stairs replaced in fibre-reinforced plastic. Supports indicate that it was originally roofed. The eastern footbridge was altered more heavily and is not included in the listing.

The signal box remained in operation until 2007, acquiring a small toilet extension, a new external staircase and a replacement uPVC door and window to the west gable end of the operating room. The interior was also slightly modernised with an inserted suspended ceiling. The original 1896 lever frame of 25 levers was also modified; two of the 14 surviving levers are later, designed to operate electrical equipment.

Fully-glazed signal boxes were being built by the early 1860s. Perhaps the most important single advance in rail safety, the interlocking of signals and points patented by John Saxby in 1856, was the final step in the evolution of railway signalling into a form recognisable today. Signal boxes were built to a great variety of different designs and sizes and numbers peaked at around 12,000 in Great Britain just prior to the First World War, reduced to around 10,000 inherited in 1948 by British Railways, and about 4,000 by 1970. In 2012, about 750 remained in use; most were rendered redundant over the next decade. Around 150 are listed, and some others survive on preserved heritage lines.

Reasons for Listing

Rainhill Railway Station, a railway station of around 1860 with waiting shelter and western footbridge of around 1880 and signal box of 1896, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:
* for the strong design interest of the elegant main building, a rural station whose design goes beyond the purely functional and standardised forms seen in other stations of a similar date, with classical detailing, a timber and cast-iron canopy with decorative spandrels, and decorative interior plasterwork and joinery;

* enhanced by surviving historic boundary treatments of good quality and the addition of other historic railway structures for passenger use, comprising a waiting shelter and western footbridge;

* complemented by the survival of the associated signal box retaining many external historic features and its internal lever frame: this is the last extant example on this line and typical of those lost, and illustrates the late-C19 development of a goods function at the station as the settlement of Rainhill became industrialised with gas and water works.

Historic interest:
* as an important example of a relatively little-altered intermediate station constructed during the peak of railway development;

* illustrating the historic development and continued usage of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway line, which opened in 1830 as the earliest intercity passenger railway line in the world.

Group value:
* with the Grade II listed Skew Bridge, with which it has a strong visual and historical relationship.

External Links

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