No 86 -  Stoke Railway Station
"perhaps the finest example of Neo-Jacobean architecture and Victorian urban planning in Staffordshire"

Stoke Railway Station 1848 

'The Railway Station at Stoke, Staffordshire.' 
Showing an elaborate building in brick and stone in the Elizabethan style, 
with gables, chimneys, finials and a portico of eight arches. 
Artist: George Buckler.

[Reproduced by permission of the 
Trustees of the William Salt Library, Stafford]  

"Busy Stoke Station must surely be one of the finest examples of Victorian architecture in the county. 

It was designed by H. A. Hunt of London, and the building, begun in 1847, opened in 1848. The complex has shaped gables, built mainly from brick, with black brick lozenge-shaped surface decoration. The Tuscan colonnade on the ground floor is now glazed but, at one time, would have been an open porch. Above this can be seen the former boardroom of the North Staffordshire Railway Company, well-lit by the double transommed windows.

The North Staffordshire Railway, later known as "The Knotty," was founded in 1845 and officially opened to passengers on April 17th, 1848, with trains running from a temporary station at Whieldon Grove, Stoke, to Norton Bridge. 

By 1849 more than 113 miles of track had been laid in North Staffordshire, along with stations, warehouses and sidings. Previously, the nearest access to a railway was Whitmore, on the Grand Junction Railway from Birmingham to Manchester via Stafford and Crewe, opened on July 4th, 1837.

At the turn of the century, the still-independent North Staffordshire Railway was enjoying a boom, both in passengers and tons of freight carried. 

An example was the first rate service on the now-defunct Loop Line which ran from Tunstall via Burslem, Cobridge, Hanley, and Etruria to Stoke, continuing along the Derby line to Fenton, and Longton, and finally to Normacot. It boasted an each-way daily service of 50 trains, running at 15-minute intervals during peak periods. 

Unfortunately, by 1922 the Knotty was on the decline: the small railway company that had resisted takeover bids from larger organisations since the 1850s could no longer hold out. In 1923 it lost its identity and was absorbed by the powerful London Midlands and Scottish Railway Company."

Neville Malkin 9th July 1975