Description
Main Station Building and Booking Office. 1876. Architect: attributed to J.H.Sanders. Single storey, golden freestone walls with ashlar 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 with curved upper corners, stone sills, mullions and lintels, the latter shaped on underside to fit over curved corners of sash windows and doors; projecting horizontal stone drip mould over lintels. Sills and lintels all painted. Entrance to waiting room and 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. Plinths to walls in shaped stone.
East elevation to station forecourt: 5 bays: to left, bay one, triple window with stone mullions and three 2-light windows, central window with vertical glazing bar. Bay two, projecting gable with vertical recess in upper wall with stone sill and lintel; three windows, 2-light sashes, central window also with vertical glazing bar. Bays 3 and 4, 2 triple windows as Bay one. Bay five, with two 2-light windows. On main longitudinal ridge four stacks. To left still lower wing with two small 2-light windows, right hand window fitted with louvres in upper part.
West elevation to platform: 5 bays: to left, bay one, small gable with trefoil oculus over two 2-light windows. Bay two, left door with fanlight, right one 2-light window with vertical glazing bars. Bays three and five, projecting gables, each with trefoil oculus over triple window with two stone mullions; centre 2-light with vertical glazing bars, outer 2-light sashes. Between bays three and five in bay four, 3-bay glazed timber screen with cast-iron glazing on each side of timber double doors under eaves of main roof. To right still lower wing with door opening to left and to right two small 2-light window openings infilled in stone.
South end elevation: 2 bays: left: gabled with two single doors, right double doors to booking hall with blocked fanlight now sealed out of use.
North end elevation: 2 bays: left: one 2-light window, right: plain gable with vertical recess in upper wall with stone sill and lintel and with two single doors.
Notes:
1: The glazed screen to the platform side of the recessed waiting room is in three bays, fitted between shallow stone 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 stone nibs. Above the capitals the columns are square in section, to which are fitted two decorative brackets in each bay, together supporting a timber beam with ashlar over. Between the two centre columns is a pair of framed and diagonal panelled doors under a decorative transom linking column capitals. Above the transom is a fanlight with three glazing bars. In the bays on either side of the centre columns are windows with sills and diagonal boarded timber panels below, on stone plinths similar in height to those of the main external walls adjacent. The three vertical glazing bars in each window have three and two half diagonal square panes inserted at mid-height. This feature was under like-for-like repair at the time of assessment July 2019.
2: This is a Type I, Large, Main Station Building and Booking Office, and stands on the up, southbound platform. The station was opened by the Midland Railway on 1st May 1876. The building is in railway operational use.
3: It is listed Grade II as “Passenger Buildings and Platforms at Settle Station” (List entry number 1132349 first listed 1984-03-09, amended 1988-09-13). The description, which includes the Waiting Room (SCRCA Location ID 236470) on the down, northbound platform, is in several significant respects no longer correct.
4: To south of main building a modern waiting room was erected in 2017, constructed in matching stone with pitched slated roof, plain timber bargeboards, windows in north and south gables, windows and glazed entrance door in west elevation to platform.
Acknowledgements and revision history
This formal description was prepared by Richard J. A. Tinker from photographs and a site assessment carried out on 13th July 2019. It was last updated on 3rd October 2019.