Dismay as Waterloo Station is turned down for listing

Network Rail wants to update Waterloo Station and is considering removing the station's roof, lengthening the platforms and lowering the concourse to the level of the former Eurostar terminal alongside.

It was this proposed redevelopment which prompted calls to list the station. The decision, this week, not to recognise the station's special architectural and historic interest comes as a major blow to heritage campaigners.

'The decision not to list Waterloo Station, against advice of English Heritage, is very worrying and leaves the station extremely vulnerable to unsympathetic change', said Heloise Brown, Conservation Adviser for the Victorian Society. 'The ingenious simplicity of Waterloo Station's design makes its innovative quality easy to underestimate. It should be afforded greater protection.'

Currently only the Victory Arch, the grandest war memorial at any station in the country, is listed.

The station was inspired by the most-up-to-date thinking from the USA and was designed for electric trains, with a much greater emphasis on the concourse than the train-shed.

However the Minister described the station as being 'much altered' and having an 'uncoordinated mixture of different styles.'

Thursday 23 September, 2010