You might describe my reading interests as catholic (very definitely with a small "C"): I read history, science, politics, philosophy, and bits of fiction. I would have given you good money that railway station architecture was not particularly likely to feature on my reading list, but I'd have lost that money.
When I saw a little paperback entitled St Pancras's Station in the lovely, small but select branch of Foyles that's opened since the London international terminus's refurbishment, I couldn't resist. After all, I only live five minutes away and walk through the station several times a week. Although had I known how much there was about those roofing struts I might not have done - and that would have been a pity.
For although this is an odd little book — mostly an architectural history, something that isn't terribly evident from the book's furniture — there's a huge number of fascinating snippets in this - and even those supporting struts are interesting.
The largest section, and the least involving, focuses on George Gilbert Scott, the architect of the great neo-Gothic frontage on the Euston Road that was built as the Midland Grand Hotel. He also built the Albert Memorial and was responsible for huge numbers of church and cathedral restorations. He was, on this account, hyperactive, arrogant, greedy, bewhiskered - the perfect Victorian male. (And his architecture to my mind doesn't have a lot to recommend it, although St Pancras is far from the worst of it.)
Things warm up when you get to the train shed chapter, which begins by roaming across the history of this entirely new form of architecture and social space (before this the only vaguely comparable place was a coaching inn, a very different beast) - with many of the examples being within a stone's throw of St Pancras, for easy comparison. Euston's "ridge-and-furrow" shed was, Bradley tells us, "essentially a lightweight translation of a timber-framed system developed for greenhouses", the prevailing type in the 1840s. "Thought readily extendable, their numerous uprights hindered flexible use of space, and their limited height coped poorly with smoke and steam generated by increasingly frequent and powerful trains."
The French stuck with this system (pah, I was thinking when walking recently through Gare de Lyon - very basic), but just next door to St Pancras in King's Cross (1852), the British started using "giant arched roofs, of which St Pancras is the culmination". King's Cross has two such arches, separated by a near-solid brick span wall.
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