Description
Main Station Building and Booking Office (Closed). 1877. Architect: attributed to J.H.Sanders. Single storey, coursed rock-faced sandstone walls with freestone dressings, pitched blue slated roofs fitted with pierced ridge tiles on generally common ridge lines. Stone chimney stacks with moulded stone caps. Gables on all elevations with pierced decorative timber bargeboards and lead/metal covered gable cappings. Timber panelled doors, timber casement windows, stone sills, mullions and lintels; projecting horizontal stone drip mould over lintels. Entrance to waiting room and former booking office with glazed screen to platform in three bays with glazing on each side of double timber doors (see Note 1). Continuous eaves boards with cast iron gutters.
East elevation to station approach: 3 bays, centre: projecting gable with circular decorative oculus over 6-light camber-headed window with transom and two mullions, all lights with margin panes; bays to left and right each with 2-light windows with straight lintels and margin panes. On main longitudinal ridge 2 ashlar stacks. To right further lower wing with one 1-light window to left, a square timber-boarded hatch to right.
West elevation to platform: 3 bays: left and right projecting gables, each with circular decorative oculus over 6-light camber-headed window with transom and two mullions, all lights with margin panes; in centre 3-bay glazed screen with cast-iron glazing on each side of timber double doors (see Note 1). To left further lower wing with one 1-light window to left, a door and a 2-light window to right. Timber diagonally boarded fence along part of this elevation separates the building from the platform in public use. Milepost 247¼ (Location ID 274250) attached to wall to right of window on left projecting gable.
North end elevation: 2 bays, right: single 2-light margin-paned window; left: plain gable with two vertical decorative slots in wall in upper part of gable and door to right; three decorative vertical slots in main roof gable above lower wing.
South end elevation: 2 bays, left: 2-light margin-paned window; right: gabled with 2-light window to left, timber door to right with 2-light margin-paned fanlight over; three vertical slots in wall in upper part of gable.
Notes
1: The glazed screen to the platform side of the recessed waiting room is in three bays, fitted between shallow masonry nibs on the side walls. The three bays are separated by four columns, circular in section at bases, shafts and decorative capitals, the two outer columns being partly recessed into the masonry nibs. The columns support a timber beam with masonry over. Between the two centre columns is a pair of framed and diagonal panelled doors. In the bays on either side of the centre columns are windows with sills and diagonally boarded timber panels below, on stone plinths similar in height to those of the main external walls adjacent. Both windows have two vertical and two horizontal cast iron glazing bars; within the intersection of the bars three circular panes are inserted at mid-height.
2: This building is a Type 3, Small, former Main Station Building and Booking Office, standing on the up, southbound platform. The station was opened by the Midland Railway on 4th December 1876 as “Batty Green”, renamed “Ribblehead” on 1st May 1877. It was closed 4th May 1970. The station was re-opened to passenger traffic on 14th July 1986. The building, no longer in railway ownership, is in operation as a railway visitor centre and tearoom open to the public. The waiting room accessed through the glazed screen is in railway passenger use.
3: It is not listed.
Acknowledgements and revision history
This formal description was prepared by Richard J. A. Tinker from photographs and a site assessment carried out on 14th September 2019. It was last updated on 23rd September 2019.