Liverpool Street Station on Victorian Society’s Top Ten Endangered Buildings list 2023

Network Rail and developer Sellar plan to demolish much of the sympathetic 20^th century trainshed which closely matches the Victorian original, severing the link between the two listed buildings and cantilever a 21-storey tower above the hotel and station. This is unprecedented over a Grade II* listed building. This scheme must be stopped if we are to remain a country which values its heritage. Network Rail should develop its estate in less sensitive areas where there is no harm to heritage to fund any improvements works beyond those that the Government is already funding. The Victorian Society has launched a fundraiser to pay for the inevitable expensive legal fight that will be needed to save the station a second time. The public can donate here.

Griff Rhys Jones, Victorian Society President and President of the Campaign to Save Liverpool Street Station (LISSCA) said: “I cannot believe that we have had to put a national monument, a great railway station, a part of the story of London and the City on to our list of endangered buildings. I am President of the reformed Liverpool Street Station Campaign which previously stopped the station’s total demolition in the 1970s. The Victorian Society is chairing the committee comprised of The Twentieth Century Society, Historic Buildings & Places, The Georgian Group, Save Britain’s Heritage, The Spitalfields Trust, Civic Voice, and London Historians. The gathering of these major voices for heritage and conservation is extremely rare and reflects how seriously we all view the threat to these glorious buildings. The Society won the fight to save Liverpool Street Station in the 1970s, and it also saved St Pancras Station too. We have to win this time because all listed buildings are at stake if the proposals to build so cavalierly on top of the station and hotel go through.”

The great rail terminus stations and their terminus hotels encapsulate the engineering and technological achievements of the Victorians. These cathedrals of steam are some of the most important Victorian buildings. The hotel is the last historic hotel in the City of London. Following the successful campaign to save the station from demolition in the 1970s, the Victorian Society and eight other amenity societies and heritage organisations believe that if plans are approved it would set a terrible precedent which would mean that no listed building is safe from harm. The developers have repeatedly argued that this scheme will cause no harm to the historic train station. However, the facts speak for themselves.

The planning application for the highly damaging plans is expected to published in the near future. LISSCA intends to ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, Michael Gove, to ‘call in’ plans to partially demolish Liverpool Street Station and build a tower over the grade II* former great eastern hotel and make the decision himself.

The full Top Ten list 2023 which can be read here includes an earl’s mansion that became a hostel for the homeless, a church where the congregation can’t hold services, two engineering marvels that saved lives through improving sanitation, and a club where newly enfranchised voters could meet. The Victorian Society has announced its Top Ten Endangered Buildings List thirteen times.

Photo credit: Guy Newton for The Victorian Society

18/06/2023