Railway Echo No.15

Last week I tipped up at one of my favourite railway stations, Cromford in Derbyshire. It simply reeks with atmosphere, reached up a quiet lane and positioned immediately before a tunnel entrance.The only sound was an approaching East Midland train making its way up to Matlock from Derby, and once its diesel throb had been lost in the maw of the tunnel silence descended once again. Built around 1860 for the Midland Railway, there is more than a splash of elegance about it. Quite possibly it was designed by G.H.Stokes, an assistant to Joseph Paxton who transformed Chatsworth's gardens and designed the 1851 Crystal Palace.

The main building is the usual Midland staple with stone walls and painted valances, but over the classic latticed footbridge is a remarkable waiting room with diamond paned windows, a steeply pitched roof and a gabled steeple of a turret. Probably the result of a French building Stokes had seen on the Continent. Certainly the house up above is like a mini chateau, and even more amazingly this was the station master's house. Oh how times have changed; the Acme Thunderer whistle blew long ago for such things, even on station masters. But perhaps we may occasionally see a steam locomotive rumble loudly into view from the tunnel, as in the 1910 photograph above.

Back in 1995 the location was used for the cover of the Oasis single 'Some Might Say', the first of their output to be top of the Hit Parade for them. They were booked to shoot the video for it here but Liam didn't turn up so it never happened. (That's him on the footbridge.) Both 'chateau' and waiting room (actually two rooms, one for women, one for men) have been very sensitively restored and the latter is available as a self-catering holiday let. Do guests wake in the night and look out through a diamond pane to see an indistinct figure waving a lantern on the footbridge and crying out sepulchrally "Look out below!".

Crystal Gazing

The good news today is that the Crystal Palace may be built again on Sydenham Hill in South London. Almost the only thing left of the original is a pair of stone sphinxes that once crouched inscrutably next to one of the entrance staircases. The rest of it burnt down in 1936, the inflagration watched by my girlfriend's mother looking out of a bathroom window in Peckham. I remember asking her if she had to stand on the toilet seat and she gave me a funny look and said "Probably." Although smaller in plan, the building had as its core the original Great Exhibition building built in 1851 by Joseph Paxton, erected in Hyde Park and visited between May and October of that year by over five million people. 

But what will the new one look like? Some bloke on the wireless this lunchtime said he expected there'd be some glass and iron in it somewhere, as if acres of glass wasn't a prerequisite. Ten years ago I remember seeing a design by Chris Wilkinson of Wilkinson Eyre at an RA Summer Show, and it would certainly suit me. A real new Crystal Palace for our own age, something we should've insisted on for the Millennium instead of that bloody awful tent in Greenwich stuffed full of tat. I couldn't find a decent photograph of the Wilkinson proposal to show you, but here's another BBC report from 2003 with a murky image attached. The brilliant thing about this Dan Dare spaceship is that it doesn't take up any parkland space, being mostly suspended in thin air as it were. Dust off those plans Chris please.