The Refurbishment of Morpeth Railway Station
Morpeth, UKSeptember 2020 was a momentous time for the historic North East market town of Morpeth. One of the town’s most cherished attractions, the elegant Grade II listed Morpeth Railway Station, which once welcomed passengers during the reign of Queen Victoria, was transformed into a state-of-the-art contemporary transport hub that now also provides much-needed workspaces for growing businesses.
Originally built in 1847, the architecture plays a huge part in transport heritage, and is recognised as one of the finest surviving examples of Benjamin Green’s ‘Jacobethan’ style mid-19th century railway buildings.
Green and his father were responsible for numerous civic and public buildings throughout the region, including many railway stations on the East Coast Main Line (ECML). Morpeth Railway Station is regarded as the last operating mainline station on the ECML that is open to passengers.
However, years of leaking roofs, generations of pigeons gaining access through holes in the roof, and rising damp caused serious internal and external damage to the building.
Funds were secured by The Greater Morpeth Development Trust
Plans were put in place to restore and conserve this historic architecture. Throughout the seven years prior to the restoration job, The Greater Morpeth Development Trust – a community-based organisation – raised an astounding £2.3 million so that the work could be carried out. As a community trust that is run by just three members of staff and a board of directors, to have achieved that level of funding is an exceptional accomplishment.
The trust set out to retain the historic building’s original features as well as provide 21st-century rail travel facilities and functional office space for small businesses.
Thanks to a number of small grants, at the development stages of the project from the Heritage Lottery Fund, The Homes & Communities Agency, CORE, Northumberland County Council and the Architectural Heritage Fund, they were able to raise the necessary funds to shape the final delivery of the project.
That's where we came in..
We were thrilled to be involved in the redevelopment of a building with so much history.
The whole project took just over a year to complete, with us moving on-site in the early months of 2019
The challenges of revitalising a historic old building whilst preserving the character of the original design were extremely complex, but our team of professionals worked their hardest to achieve this.
We worked trackside on the busy main line between London and Edinburgh, with high-speed trains passing through at regular intervals during the working day.
The project had to be completed without disturbing rail traffic. A lot of the work involved assembling and dismantling scaffolding, which had to be undertaken during the night or over the weekends when it was safe for the power to the lines to be isolated.
Our involvement in the project
To get the work done, we had a team of 30 scaffolders, eight glaziers, 12 joiners and numerous labourers on the job.
We helped reopen and repair all five portico openings and installed an additional step riser to the station to align with the reconfigured internal floor level, which has been raised to provide ambient DDA access.
Our team rebuilt the popular and elegant Victorian portico at the front of the building, to re-instate a classically stylish entrance to the building, restored as accurately to Green’s original specifications as possible.
For the travelling public and people of Morpeth, what will be immediately obvious is the new entrance into the building via the original portico access and new automatic glass door.
There were many challenges that we had to overcome. An example is the under-sized beams forming in the structural support for the chimney in the new cafeteria, which had to be taken out and replaced with two six-metre-long steel beams.
We also found different platform levels were sloping back into the main building, allowing water to run straight through and in turn rotting the wooden floors. To overcome this, we had to equally level these platforms, which will now partially assist any traveller using a wheelchair.
A fantastic end result...
There was a huge amount of team effort and partnership involved in the redevelopment of Morpeth Railway Station, and it’s safe to say everyone came together to play their part and the end result is nothing short of remarkable.
It’s fantastic to see the newly refurbished station has started to welcome passengers to its new facilities, as well as 6 local businesses that are now able to use the previously unused office spaces.
We are extremely proud to have been the main contractor for this project and to have helped preserve and restore a vital piece of Morpeth’s history.
Do you have a construction project in mind? Contact us today.
