An engineering miracle based on beer barrels
Passengers arriving at St Pancras International on the Eurostar trains from Paris are greeted by a masterpiece of Victorian architecture, an aesthetic and engineering marvel. The golden age of railway construction was coming to an end in Britain when St Pancras Station was opened in 1868. The engineer William Henry Barlow was therefore able to benefit from the experience of many predecessors. Whereas trains steaming into the neighbouring King’s Cross Station entered two parallel sheds with a width of 32 metres each, Barlow designed a roof with a single span of 74.8 metres, a new record that was only exceeded 20 years later. Barlow’s innovative construction of 25 pointed arches of iron, braced by lateral girders hidden beneath the tracks, enabled him to build a single span without an extensive web of trusses below the main arches, which would have detracted from the clean lines of the roof.
To the north of the station lies the Regent’s Canal, which the railway had to cross in a tunnel or on a bridge. As the gradient that a tunnel would have required presented problems for locomotives of that era, Barlow opted for a bridge, with the consequence that the tracks reached the station above street level. The space beneath them was used by the Midland Railway to store up to 100,000 beer barrels, as part of the company’s business was to supply beer from Burton-on-Trent for London’s insatiable thirst. The distance between the 800 cast-iron columns that support the tracks was a multiple of the size of a 36-gallon barrel. The roof arches are twice as far apart as the columns. Thus the breathtaking architectural space of St Pancras is based on the Burton beer barrel.
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Address Euston Road, N1C 4QL | Public Transport King’s Cross-St Pancras (Circle, Hammersmith & City, Metropolitan, Northern, Victoria Line) | Tip The station hotel at St Pancras, designed by George Gilbert Scott, is one of the very finest examples of Victorian architecture. The restaurant in the old ticket office gives an impression of its superb interiors.
The renovation and alteration of the station for its reopening in 2007 restored the architecture to its old glory and allowed light to flood through the roof again. The beer store is now the arrivals hall.
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