Description

BEARSTED

144/0/10016 WARE STREET
05-JAN-11 Weighbridge house at Bearsted Railway
Station and associated structures

GV II
Weighbridge house, weighbridge and cattle dock. Circa 1884, probably designed by Arthur Stride, for the Maidstone and Ashford Railway.

MATERIALS: Weighbridge house of yellow brick in Flemish bond with red brick dressings and slate roof. Cattle dock yellow brick in stretcher bond. Steel weighbridge set into concrete base.

DESCRIPTION: the weighbridge house is a single-storey building constructed of yellow brick in Flemish bond with red brick voussoirs and a gabled slate roof. The south-east elevation has a horizontal-sliding casement with glazing bars intact (not glazed at the time of inspection) and stone cill. Beside it is a half-glazed wooden door. The interior has a boarded wooden roof with collar beams and ridgepiece.

The weighbridge to the north-west comprises a horizontal rectangular steel structure set into a concrete base, made up of three adjoining incised steel plates and steel edging with the rectangular slot for the winch mechanism on one side.

The cattle dock consisted of a rectangular pen without a roof. The yellow brick floor survives.

HISTORY: the weighbridge house, weighbridge and cattle dock were built in the goods yard at Bearsted Station in 1884 for the Maidstone and Ashford Railway, probably by Arthur Stride who designed Bearsted Railway Station. The Maidstone and Ashford Railway was purchased by the London, Chatham and Dover Railway when it was completed and became part of the South Eastern and Chatham Railway in 1899. All three structures are shown on the 1897 Ordnance Survey map and their footprint has not changed.

The goods yard was shut in 1964 and became a storage yard for a firm of coal merchants until the 1990s. After 1964 the C20 tubular steel fence with concrete posts to the cattle dock was removed.

SOURCES:
C F Dendy Marshall, The History of the Southern Railway, Revised edition ed. Ian Allan (1963), 453
Andrew Knight, The Railways of South East England (1986), 47
C Awdry, Encyclopaedia of British Railway Companies (1990)

REASONS FOR DESIGNATION:
the c1884 weigh house, weighbridge and cattle dock built for the Maidstone and Ashford Railway at Bearsted are designated at Grade II for the folllowing principal reasons:
* Intactness: the weigh house is substantially intact.
* Rarity: railway weigh houses are a very rare building type, as are their associated weighbridges and cattle docks.
* Group Value: Bearsted is the only station on this line to retain the station buildings and adjoining goods shed, weigh house and cattle dock and is therefore the best exemplar for the Maidstone and Ashford Railway.

TQ7981956131

Reasons for Listing

Listable at Grade II.

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26675183

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

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