St. Pancras Reborn Part II

After a long dormant spell, George Gilbert Scott's magnificent Midland Grand Hotel is about to be re-opened - the jewel in the crown of the St Pancras railway redevelopment which has already seen the relocation of the Eurostar terminal. A triumph of neo-Gothic splendour, the red brick Grade I listed hotel has been painstakingly restored by architect Geoff Mann who worked with English Heritage to preserve as many of the original features as possible. Many of these date back to 1876 when the hotel first opened - making it the last and most extravagant of the great Victorian railway hotels. Grand and imposing though it was, the Midland Hotel was soon redundant - its fate doomed by the end of the railway boom and the lack of bathrooms (it had just eight bathrooms 300 rooms; an army of servants did the rest). It closed just 59 years after it opened. This magnificent high Gothic revival building was designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott, the High Priest of Victorian Architecture, (he also designed the Foreign Office and the Albert Memorial) in 1865. It was purpose built as the Midland Grand Hotel, the rear joining Barlow's equally splendid single-span train shed.


St Pancras Midland Grand Hotel

Back in the early 1960s, high Victorian architecture was widely considered to be hideous, fit only for demolition. Many key buildings were lost. Next in line, the highest of high Victorian, were the smoke-blackened, sinister turrets of underused St Pancras, right next to dour old King’s Cross. With the railways long since nationalised and passenger numbers falling, what need for such duplication? So, in 1966, a merged station was mooted; the wrecking ball was readied.


St Pancras Chambers as British Rail's catering headquarters in the 1960's


By then, however, the tide was turning. The Beatles and the Kinks loved Victoriana, as did the cuddly poet and conservationist John Betjeman. St Pancras was duly listed as a Grade I building, on a par with the Tower of London. But, having saved it, nobody knew what to do with it. Whilst Betjeman’s name is associated with saving St. Pancras and he certainly was a supporter the campaigning and successful lobbying was done by Jane Fowler of the Victorian Society and the great Architectural Historian, Sir Nicholas Pevsner. Sir John was more heavily involved in trying to save Euston from the Philistines.

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2009/09/euston-arch.html

When St. Pancras train station opened in 1868 there was no finer railway terminus anywhere in the world. The view down Pentonville Road towards the great gothic facade of the Midland Hotel at St. Pancras was one of the archetypal views of London.





Outside it spoke of the confidence of the Victorians and it was designed to make the public accept the new fangled rail travel as the way to go by associating it with images of past greatness. The Train Sheds were the Victorian’s cathedrals, stunning the public with their scale and the beauty of the engineering and frequently suffocating them with their sulphurous interiors! St Pancras Station is a celebration of Victorian architecture and engineering featuring two contrasting, exceptional Victorian structures, the train shed by W H Barlow & R M Ordish (1863-5) and the magnificent Midland Grand Hotel by Sir George Gilbert Scott (1868-74).

For the story of the rebirth of St. Pancras see;


http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2007/11/st-pancras-reborn.html

After nearly two decades of having only bats, rats and the occasional tramp as inhabitants, the former Midland Grand Hotel beside London’s St Pancras station is at last about to open its doors to paying guests in May, re-christened the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel London. The restoration of the grand Victorian-Gothic structure cost more than £150 million, but by all accounts it was money well spent. It is one of London’s most high profile restoration projects, and created within the former St. Pancras Chambers 67 residential apartments, a penthouse and a 244-bedroom Five Star Marriott Renaissance Hotel.







The Midland Grand Hotel, the salmon-coloured Gothic fantasia that introduces St Pancras station to London, should not by rights exist. It has spent more of its 127-year life as a problem, a failing building ill-suited to the purposes it was supposed to serve.


The hotel lounge 1907


Even at conception, its existence was rackety and perilous. As the author Simon Bradley recounted in his book on St Pancras, it was the last and most extravagant of the great Victorian railway hotels, costing 14 times more than its nearby rival the Great Northern. It opened when the railway boom was turning to bust, the 19th century's equivalent of the bursting of the dotcom bubble. A floor was shaved off the proposals in an effort to cut costs, and the lavish ornament cheapened. Oak was substituted with cheaper deal. For the completion of its interiors, its celebrated and workaholic architect Sir George Gilbert Scott was replaced with a more malleable practice.




The Dining Room 1907 and 2005

The Midland Grand still managed to be one of the most spectacular Gothic Revival buildings anywhere and, for a decade or two, the epitome of luxury. It represented industrial wealth in medieval form. Sanctified with the style of cathedrals, it was an exotic bloom grown out of the muck and coal of the industrial Midlands. Indeed the structure was fashioned from an amazing six million red bricks made from the clay of the Midlands of England and transported to London by rail. No doubt this fantasy in brick delighted the bones of one of Britain’s greatest architects and son of a bricklayer Sir John Soane who is interred in St Pancras Churchyard behind the station. Indeed the grandson of the architect George Gilbert Scott was Giles Gilbert Scott who designed the famous red telephone box based on Sir John Soane’s mausoleum and went on to design many famous buildings in red brick including Battersea and Bankside Power Stations (the latter now the Tate Modern) and the Guinness Brewery at Park Royal. We are not quiet finished with architectural trivia here for as an apprentice architect the writer Thomas Hardy was involved in the controversial clearing of part of the churchyard to build the railway tracks into St. Pancras.

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2011/02/sir-john-soanes-museum_16.html

But the hotel business moved on and it faded from fashion - not least because its handsome rooms came without bathrooms. It closed in 1935, after which it became offices for the railway company. After the coming of British Rail, it became the base of the company's catering division, from which crimes against gastronomy were plotted for buffets across the land. Partitions, suspended ceilings and fluorescent lights sliced mercilessly through the hotel's florid detail.


Ceiling in main stairway



What at its opening was called “the most perfect in every possible respect in the world”, would be called “completely obsolete and hopeless” by one chairman of the railway company. Not even architectural historians liked it – they mostly thought it too flashy and vulgar, and could not forgive the way it obscured the more innovative steel structure of the station roof behind. They preferred simpler, more chaste stations, like King's Cross.

There were open attempts to demolish it, until a Grade I listing in 1967 meant it had to stay. In 1988, the office workers moved out, after the building was declared unsafe. In 1993-5, £9 million of public money was spent on restoring the exterior but the building remained unused.


Former booking office


Now, 75 years since it closed as a hotel, the arduous, expensive struggle to find it a prosperous future is nearly over. The conversion of one half of it into 67 apartments is now complete and this week the rest of it, together with a new rear extension, will open as a 245-bedroom Marriott Renaissance hotel, designed by the architects RHWL and Richard Griffiths. By any measure of value engineering, or cost-benefit analysis, it should not be there. The fact that it is can be attributed to the power of fantasy — a power whose effects can be measured in hundreds of millions of pounds.

I toured 'St Pancras Chambers' as the empty hotel had recently been known, during the Open London Weekend in 2005 and was deeply impressed not to say stunned by its musty grandeur. Important features we saw included the curved Dining Hall, the wonderful Grand Staircase, and the drawing room which is built across the West Front. The full richness of the interior will become apparent now the hotel is completed. The delightful staircases, curving dining rooms, and riotous stencilling and plasterwork will become visible. It is, however, already possible to see that, in the sheer fact of this building finally returning to active use, something extraordinary has happened.

In the years when the hotel was threatened, Sir John Betjeman said that the Midland Grand Hotel was “too beautiful and too romantic to survive”. He was wrong: it has survived for precisely these reasons. Beauty and romance will make people pay more for flats and hotel rooms, and have inspired huge efforts over decades on the building's behalf.





The building is also a rebuke to all those who wanted to demolish it in the name of efficiency and modernity. Fifty years ago they were many, but the idea now seems inconceivable. There are currently similar mutterings about a work of George Gilbert Scott's grandson Giles, Battersea Power Station. Anyone who doubts the wisdom of preserving the latter should go to St Pancras and see what an awkward pile of old bricks can do. If I was to single out one visionary responsible for this rebirth of the Grandest Dame amongst London Hotels it is Harry Handelsman of Manhattan Loft Corporation who was originally involved in 2005 in a joint venture to build the apartments but who ended up taking over nearly the entire project. His, and English Heritage’s, insistence in recreating the Victorian craftsmanship of the original has resulted in a truly stunning reincarnation. Welcome back St. Pancras. Welcome back to the Midland Grand Hotel. Welcome back the Golden Age of Railways.



For more on how the railways changed London (and then the world!) see;


http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/01/great-circle-line-journey.html


CGI of the interior of the new Marriott Renaissance hotel

St. Pancras Reborn Part II

After a long dormant spell, George Gilbert Scott's magnificent Midland Grand Hotel is about to be re-opened - the jewel in the crown of the St Pancras railway redevelopment which has already seen the relocation of the Eurostar terminal. A triumph of neo-Gothic splendour, the red brick Grade I listed hotel has been painstakingly restored by architect Geoff Mann who worked with English Heritage to preserve as many of the original features as possible. Many of these date back to 1876 when the hotel first opened - making it the last and most extravagant of the great Victorian railway hotels. Grand and imposing though it was, the Midland Hotel was soon redundant - its fate doomed by the end of the railway boom and the lack of bathrooms (it had just eight bathrooms 300 rooms; an army of servants did the rest). It closed just 59 years after it opened. This magnificent high Gothic revival building was designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott, the High Priest of Victorian Architecture, (he also designed the Foreign Office and the Albert Memorial) in 1865. It was purpose built as the Midland Grand Hotel, the rear joining Barlow's equally splendid single-span train shed.


St Pancras Midland Grand Hotel

Back in the early 1960s, high Victorian architecture was widely considered to be hideous, fit only for demolition. Many key buildings were lost. Next in line, the highest of high Victorian, were the smoke-blackened, sinister turrets of underused St Pancras, right next to dour old King’s Cross. With the railways long since nationalised and passenger numbers falling, what need for such duplication? So, in 1966, a merged station was mooted; the wrecking ball was readied.


St Pancras Chambers as British Rail's catering headquarters in the 1960's


By then, however, the tide was turning. The Beatles and the Kinks loved Victoriana, as did the cuddly poet and conservationist John Betjeman. St Pancras was duly listed as a Grade I building, on a par with the Tower of London. But, having saved it, nobody knew what to do with it. Whilst Betjeman’s name is associated with saving St. Pancras and he certainly was a supporter the campaigning and successful lobbying was done by Jane Fowler of the Victorian Society and the great Architectural Historian, Sir Nicholas Pevsner. Sir John was more heavily involved in trying to save Euston from the Philistines.

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2009/09/euston-arch.html

When St. Pancras train station opened in 1868 there was no finer railway terminus anywhere in the world. The view down Pentonville Road towards the great gothic facade of the Midland Hotel at St. Pancras was one of the archetypal views of London.





Outside it spoke of the confidence of the Victorians and it was designed to make the public accept the new fangled rail travel as the way to go by associating it with images of past greatness. The Train Sheds were the Victorian’s cathedrals, stunning the public with their scale and the beauty of the engineering and frequently suffocating them with their sulphurous interiors! St Pancras Station is a celebration of Victorian architecture and engineering featuring two contrasting, exceptional Victorian structures, the train shed by W H Barlow & R M Ordish (1863-5) and the magnificent Midland Grand Hotel by Sir George Gilbert Scott (1868-74).

For the story of the rebirth of St. Pancras see;


http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2007/11/st-pancras-reborn.html

After nearly two decades of having only bats, rats and the occasional tramp as inhabitants, the former Midland Grand Hotel beside London’s St Pancras station is at last about to open its doors to paying guests in May, re-christened the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel London. The restoration of the grand Victorian-Gothic structure cost more than £150 million, but by all accounts it was money well spent. It is one of London’s most high profile restoration projects, and created within the former St. Pancras Chambers 67 residential apartments, a penthouse and a 244-bedroom Five Star Marriott Renaissance Hotel.







The Midland Grand Hotel, the salmon-coloured Gothic fantasia that introduces St Pancras station to London, should not by rights exist. It has spent more of its 127-year life as a problem, a failing building ill-suited to the purposes it was supposed to serve.


The hotel lounge 1907


Even at conception, its existence was rackety and perilous. As the author Simon Bradley recounted in his book on St Pancras, it was the last and most extravagant of the great Victorian railway hotels, costing 14 times more than its nearby rival the Great Northern. It opened when the railway boom was turning to bust, the 19th century's equivalent of the bursting of the dotcom bubble. A floor was shaved off the proposals in an effort to cut costs, and the lavish ornament cheapened. Oak was substituted with cheaper deal. For the completion of its interiors, its celebrated and workaholic architect Sir George Gilbert Scott was replaced with a more malleable practice.




The Dining Room 1907 and 2005

The Midland Grand still managed to be one of the most spectacular Gothic Revival buildings anywhere and, for a decade or two, the epitome of luxury. It represented industrial wealth in medieval form. Sanctified with the style of cathedrals, it was an exotic bloom grown out of the muck and coal of the industrial Midlands. Indeed the structure was fashioned from an amazing six million red bricks made from the clay of the Midlands of England and transported to London by rail. No doubt this fantasy in brick delighted the bones of one of Britain’s greatest architects and son of a bricklayer Sir John Soane who is interred in St Pancras Churchyard behind the station. Indeed the grandson of the architect George Gilbert Scott was Giles Gilbert Scott who designed the famous red telephone box based on Sir John Soane’s mausoleum and went on to design many famous buildings in red brick including Battersea and Bankside Power Stations (the latter now the Tate Modern) and the Guinness Brewery at Park Royal. We are not quiet finished with architectural trivia here for as an apprentice architect the writer Thomas Hardy was involved in the controversial clearing of part of the churchyard to build the railway tracks into St. Pancras.

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2011/02/sir-john-soanes-museum_16.html

But the hotel business moved on and it faded from fashion - not least because its handsome rooms came without bathrooms. It closed in 1935, after which it became offices for the railway company. After the coming of British Rail, it became the base of the company's catering division, from which crimes against gastronomy were plotted for buffets across the land. Partitions, suspended ceilings and fluorescent lights sliced mercilessly through the hotel's florid detail.


Ceiling in main stairway



What at its opening was called “the most perfect in every possible respect in the world”, would be called “completely obsolete and hopeless” by one chairman of the railway company. Not even architectural historians liked it – they mostly thought it too flashy and vulgar, and could not forgive the way it obscured the more innovative steel structure of the station roof behind. They preferred simpler, more chaste stations, like King's Cross.

There were open attempts to demolish it, until a Grade I listing in 1967 meant it had to stay. In 1988, the office workers moved out, after the building was declared unsafe. In 1993-5, £9 million of public money was spent on restoring the exterior but the building remained unused.


Former booking office


Now, 75 years since it closed as a hotel, the arduous, expensive struggle to find it a prosperous future is nearly over. The conversion of one half of it into 67 apartments is now complete and this week the rest of it, together with a new rear extension, will open as a 245-bedroom Marriott Renaissance hotel, designed by the architects RHWL and Richard Griffiths. By any measure of value engineering, or cost-benefit analysis, it should not be there. The fact that it is can be attributed to the power of fantasy — a power whose effects can be measured in hundreds of millions of pounds.

I toured 'St Pancras Chambers' as the empty hotel had recently been known, during the Open London Weekend in 2005 and was deeply impressed not to say stunned by its musty grandeur. Important features we saw included the curved Dining Hall, the wonderful Grand Staircase, and the drawing room which is built across the West Front. The full richness of the interior will become apparent now the hotel is completed. The delightful staircases, curving dining rooms, and riotous stencilling and plasterwork will become visible. It is, however, already possible to see that, in the sheer fact of this building finally returning to active use, something extraordinary has happened.

In the years when the hotel was threatened, Sir John Betjeman said that the Midland Grand Hotel was “too beautiful and too romantic to survive”. He was wrong: it has survived for precisely these reasons. Beauty and romance will make people pay more for flats and hotel rooms, and have inspired huge efforts over decades on the building's behalf.





The building is also a rebuke to all those who wanted to demolish it in the name of efficiency and modernity. Fifty years ago they were many, but the idea now seems inconceivable. There are currently similar mutterings about a work of George Gilbert Scott's grandson Giles, Battersea Power Station. Anyone who doubts the wisdom of preserving the latter should go to St Pancras and see what an awkward pile of old bricks can do. If I was to single out one visionary responsible for this rebirth of the Grandest Dame amongst London Hotels it is Harry Handelsman of Manhattan Loft Corporation who was originally involved in 2005 in a joint venture to build the apartments but who ended up taking over nearly the entire project. His, and English Heritage’s, insistence in recreating the Victorian craftsmanship of the original has resulted in a truly stunning reincarnation. Welcome back St. Pancras. Welcome back to the Midland Grand Hotel. Welcome back the Golden Age of Railways.



For more on how the railways changed London (and then the world!) see;


http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/01/great-circle-line-journey.html


CGI of the interior of the new Marriott Renaissance hotel

All the world’s a circle?

Well a year ago this poster wouldn’t have been unusual because the Circle Line was what’s the word, a Circle! But then the most historic and iconic Underground line in London (and the first Underground Line in the world) will underwent a radical revamp in operations where the Line known as the Circle will became a T-Cup or Lasso depending on your preference! The Circle line was extended to Hammersmith from 13th December 2009 and which almost doubled the frequency of trains between Hammersmith and Edgware Road. On the Tube map the Circle line is shown as a single line. However it shares tracks with the District, Hammersmith & City (H & C) and Metropolitan lines and any disruption on these lines can cause delays to the Circle. As Circle line trains moved around the line without a fixed terminus any delays were compounded over time, and made it harder to offer a regular or reliable service.

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2009/12/squaring-circle.html

From December 13th last year, Circle line trains now start in Hammersmith, run along the current Hammersmith & City line to Edgware Road and then do a clockwise lap of the Circle line and head back to Hammersmith. They then do the journey anti-clockwise. That was with the exception of last weekend when the Circle Line once again lived up to its name again!



The photo above and the truly wonderful one below are courtesy of The Fact Compiler on The Railway Eye Blog which is on my Blog Roll on the sidebar and is an invaluable source of fact and gossip from the UK Rail industry.

http://railwayeye.blogspot.com

For more on the Circle Line see;

THE GREAT CIRCLE LINE JOURNEY

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/01/great-circle-line-journey.htm



Willersley Tunnel (Northern portal), near Matlock Bath, Christmas Day 2010

All the world’s a circle?

Well a year ago this poster wouldn’t have been unusual because the Circle Line was what’s the word, a Circle! But then the most historic and iconic Underground line in London (and the first Underground Line in the world) will underwent a radical revamp in operations where the Line known as the Circle will became a T-Cup or Lasso depending on your preference! The Circle line was extended to Hammersmith from 13th December 2009 and which almost doubled the frequency of trains between Hammersmith and Edgware Road. On the Tube map the Circle line is shown as a single line. However it shares tracks with the District, Hammersmith & City (H & C) and Metropolitan lines and any disruption on these lines can cause delays to the Circle. As Circle line trains moved around the line without a fixed terminus any delays were compounded over time, and made it harder to offer a regular or reliable service.

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2009/12/squaring-circle.html

From December 13th last year, Circle line trains now start in Hammersmith, run along the current Hammersmith & City line to Edgware Road and then do a clockwise lap of the Circle line and head back to Hammersmith. They then do the journey anti-clockwise. That was with the exception of last weekend when the Circle Line once again lived up to its name again!



The photo above and the truly wonderful one below are courtesy of The Fact Compiler on The Railway Eye Blog which is on my Blog Roll on the sidebar and is an invaluable source of fact and gossip from the UK Rail industry.

http://railwayeye.blogspot.com

For more on the Circle Line see;

THE GREAT CIRCLE LINE JOURNEY

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/01/great-circle-line-journey.htm



Willersley Tunnel (Northern portal), near Matlock Bath, Christmas Day 2010

Squaring the Circle

The Lasso or T-Cup Line

The most historic and iconic Underground line in London (and the first Underground Line in the world) will undergo a radical revamp in operations where the Line known as the Circle will become a T-Cup or Lasso depending on your preference! The Circle line will be extended to Hammersmith from 13th December 2009 and will almost double the frequency of trains between Hammersmith and Edgware Road. On the Tube map the Circle line is shown as a single line. However it shares tracks with the District, Hammersmith & City (H & C) and Metropolitan lines and any disruption on these lines can cause delays to the Circle. As Circle line trains currently move around the line without a fixed terminus any delays are compounded over time, and make it harder to offer a regular or reliable service.



The Circle line is to be extended to Hammersmith for commuters on one of the Tube's most unreliable routes. In the most radical change since the service was first created more than 120 years ago, trains will be redirected to create what Underground insiders are already calling the “T - Cup”. From December, Circle line trains will start in Hammersmith, run along the current Hammersmith & City line to Edgware Road and then do a clockwise lap of the Circle line and head back to Hammersmith. They would then do the journey anti-clockwise.


The "New" Circle

At present the Hammersmith & City line has only seven trains an hour. Under the new service, there will be a train every four minutes, or 15 an hour. Engineers believe the change will have a positive effect on the whole network, which is often jammed at peak times by the “backing up” of Circle line trains stuck in tunnels. The 14-mile line, which was created in 1884, carries 75 million passengers a year but its circular pattern means it suffers from crippling delays when a train breaks down or is hit by a signal failure. Unlike other lines, it lacks a maintenance depot on its route. By giving the Circle line a start and end point the Underground will be able to recover the service quicker if there is disruption on the Circle or any of the lines that it shares tracks with.


Existing Circle Line C69 Stock at Royal Oak

Howard Collins, Chief Operating Officer of London Underground, said: “The changes to service patterns on the Circle line will come into effect in December 2009 and will improve the reliability of the line, enabling services to recover more quickly if there is a disruption. It will still be called the Circle line and shown as a circle on the Tube map but with the additional extended service out to Hammersmith.” This is the first phase of the Sub Surface lines upgrade, which will include a new fleet of air conditioned and accessible trains and a new state of the art signalling system.

Under the new plans, the service will double the number of trains running to Hammersmith. It will feed demand in west London, including the new station at Wood Lane near Westfield shopping centre. Residents in south-west London will benefit as the extra capacity will mean more District line trains from Wimbledon to the City. The East End will also get more trains as off-peak Hammersmith & City line trains will no longer start/terminate at Whitechapel but will run all the way to Plaistow or Barking – a consequence of forthcoming work to construct a new CrossRail station.


This way to Barking!

The Circle line’s operations are complicated by the domino effect of service disruptions on the parts of the H & C, District and Metropolitan Lines which run over its tracks and the fact that it seems to attract more than its fair share of "Passenger Incidents", suicide attempts, getting ill on train and security alerts. Hopefully after the changes customers will experience a more frequent, reliable and robust service. This is important as the Circle joins most of the London Mainline stations and is of particular importance for passengers in transit through London as well as the regular commuters. The next stage in making it user friendly will be complying with Phase 3 of the Disability Discrimination Act and tackling the very real access issues which limit the use of the line to many passenger groups. These are not just “disabled people” but passengers with children, mobility impairments and luggage. Just look at the number of passengers at Victoria engaging in hernia inducing manoeuvres with heavy luggage and you realise that this is not “World Class” access for the 21st Century!



Regular Blogistas will know that not only is the Circle Line the Sage’s favourite Underground Line but it is also one of the Great Railway Journeys of the World! There are many Great Rail journeys in the world but there is only one which begins and ends at Paddington Station, London, can be done in a day for the price of a TravelCard and brings you through 27 Underground stations and 13 Mainline Railway stations. So check out this link to this adventure in a Day as we make our way to probably the most historic railway platform in the world, platform 16 at London’s Paddington Station from where the world’s first Underground Train departed on 10th January 1863.

THE GREAT CIRCLE LINE JOURNEY

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/01/great-circle-line-journey.html


London Underground's new comfort cooled and accessible Sub-Surface Stock