Archaeology Notes

Event ID 714257

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/714257

Haymarket Station, built 1840-2 for the Edinburgh and Glasgow Rly. by architect John Miller. Now a 4-platform through station in a cutting with the main offices in a 2-storey and basement, 7-bay building at street level. This is the original office block of 1842, with Doric tetrastyle portico. Behind the main offices is the original 9-bay, cast-iron and wood train shed, now used as a car park. The present platforms had extensive wood-framed awnings, now cut back, and, in the case of the island platform, wooden waiting rooms. Under threat of redevelopment.

J R Hume 1976.

Haymarket Station, 1840. Originally the head office and terminus of the Edinburgh and Glasgow Rly. by the civil engineer, John Miller (possibly by David Bell who designed station buildings for him in the late 1840's). The lines are on a lower level. Original cobbled platforms and iron train shed (now at Bo'ness) with tie-rod trusses on fluted columns, their brackets tendrilled Neo-Greek. Redevelopment has been stopped but modernization proceeds.

J Gifford, C McWilliam and D Walker 1984.

Haymarket Station was originally planned and built between 1840 and 1842 as the eastern terminus of the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway Company, one of the principal constituents of the later North British Railway. The designer was John Miller, engineer. The frontal office-block of the present station, and immediately to the W, a train-shed which has been removed to the preserved railway at Bo'ness, represent all that is left of the original terminal station. In 1846 the railway line was extended eastward to Waverley Station, and Haymarket was subsequently converted into a four-platform through-station with two sets of double-tracks.

The remains of the early train-shed consisted of ten surviving bays of an elegant arcaded and canopied structure, originally twelve bays and 239 ft (72.85m) in overall length. The bays were formed with fluted cast-iron columns and elliptical arches with decorated spandrels; the columns were hollow, serving as rainwater conductors, and on the S side of the canopy, where there was no platform, they set on high stone pedestals. The tie-rods of the roof-structure were secured by ornate struts; the apex of each truss incorporates a pendant anthmion leaf, and on the S side the ends rest on carved scrolled brackets.

The office block has a classical 82ft 3in-long (25.07m) and two-storeyed frontage to the station forecourt. It is hip-roofed and its seven bays incorporate slightly advanced end-pavilions and a central tetrastyle portico, all faced in yellowish sandstone ashlar. The openings are emphasised by broad offset margins with scrolled brackets and consoles, and a large circular clock occupies a prominent central position in the block parapet above a mutuled cornice. The main floors are set above a basement at the platform level; there is still an original external stair at the N end, but the interior has been remodelled and modernised.

G D Hay and G P Stell 1986.

See also: NT27SW 90.01 2292 7281 Engine Shed

NT27SW 90.02 centred 2270 7297 and 2000 7164 to 2599 7360 Edinburgh to Glasgow Railway

NT27SW 90.03 2230 7251 Westfield Railway Bridge