Category: Brandon

[I originally published this in August 2018 and have reposted it to fix the broken image links. A lot has happened since then, I was one of the people who complained heavily when Greater Anglia tried to demolish the station and it’s now in one hell of a state since a bit of it fell off]

It was too hot in Cambridge, so I felt a visit to Brandon was in order.

This rather attractive little railway station was opened in 1845 and was part of the Norwich & Brandon Railway. The railway station services the town of Brandon and there is an interesting quirk that the station is in Norfolk whilst the main part of the town is in Suffolk.

Brandon railway station in 1845.

Brandon railway station in 2018. Sadly entirely boarded up, it has been staffless since the 1970s.

A view towards Cambridge.

It’s sad to see the buildings all boarded up, but at least they’ve tried to brighten it up a little.

The frontage of the railway station, just used as a car park now.

The railway station has been adopted, so at least there are some people taking care of it. The Brandon Heritage Centre mentions on their web-site that the group who adopted the station tried to take over and protect the buildings, but the landowners refused. Perhaps one day it’ll be able to re-open in some form….

Some good news from SAVE’s Britain’s Heritage who have issued a statement today about Brandon railway station. I must admit I’m surprised, although having written that, I couldn’t get any answer from Greater Anglia about this and they didn’t seem to really know what they were doing. They couldn’t even tell me if there was to be any salvage attempt at the building or whether any of the frontage could be kept.

Anyway, SAVE’s press statement notes:

“A delightful country station dating from the golden decade of railway building and used in the filming of Dad’s Army has received a reprieve from imminent demolition. A High Court order issued today quashed the decision by Breckland District Council to allow the demolition of the 1845 station building at Brandon on the Cambridge to Norwich line. This follows judicial review proceedings launched by SAVE Britain’s Heritage seeking the quashing of the Council’s decision.

The Council had issued a lawful development certificate which said that Greater Anglia could construct a new car park under the railway permitted development rights. The Council accepted that they had failed to apply the legal test for what was railway land and overlooked SAVE’s representations.

In its response to the legal challenge the Council consented to the quashing of the certificate. Greater Anglia did not resist the Court order. SAVE will now work with the Suffolk Building Preservation Trust on new plans for repairing this historic station and bringing it back to use. A listing application has also been submitted to Historic England – supported by SAVE – and we are expecting a recommendation imminently.”

A couple of years ago I posted about Brandon railway station, a pretty and quaint station which is a little similar in style to nearby Thetford railway station. Thetford is partially closed up, but Brandon is entirely closed up and the station buildings are falling down. And now there is a plan to demolish them entirely, which has seemingly been passed by the local council.

Much as Greater Anglia annoy me occasionally, I’ve still been very impressed generally about their responsibility towards their railway infrastructure. But, it looks to me that there’s been a slight failure of communication here from Greater Anglia, who have presented nearly nothing about what they’re doing to mitigate the historic loss if the station buildings are demolished.

I post on this blog quite a lot about the dreadful mistakes made in the past, indeed, just yesterday I whittled on about the demolition of a street in Norwich which was turned into a beautiful car park. And here, in Brandon, that’s what Greater Anglia wants to build. A car park that apparently needs the demolition of the station buildings, even though building a car park wouldn’t require their demolition so that all seems something of a misnomer. Perhaps the building is too far gone, but there’s no talk about saving any interiors, about keeping any part of the structure, about keeping the facade or indeed anything.

There’s a news release from Greater Anglia which really seeks to shift the blame onto the Railway Heritage Trust, which strikes me as clever, but unfortunate. The news release seems clumsy to me as well, I’m really not sure that many people reading it are that engaged about improving drainage on the site that could be achieved by demolishing some buildings of not inconsiderable heritage.

Personally, I think the demolition is something that will be regretted in years, rather than decades, but Greater Anglia does perhaps owe it to the public to actually state what they’re doing to preserve what heritage they can, rather than applaud their exciting new car park. Their logic about how it has been falling down for years with nothing being done also perhaps says more about Greater Anglia’s corporate responsibility rather than anything else. They’re spending a million pounds on this project and I’m struggling to see how they can manage to save absolutely none of the heritage in any shape or form with that level of funding.

To those heritage groups fighting for the railway station, good luck….