Site of Nottingham Victoria Railway Station

When  the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire  Railway got Parliamentary approval to extend their  lines to London from their terminus just north of Nottingham one of the first "prizes" they looked for was the opportunity  to serve passengers  from the centre of the city of Nottingham. Here they hit two problems. The first was that , being  late in the game as far as railway  building was concerned they had to contend with a much more congested  route than their rivals, the Midland Railway, which had built its station in Nottingham some 52 years earlier. The result was that they would have to approach  Nottingham City Centre via tunnels and continue  the southward progress again underground.

This did not phase their company chairman at the time, Edward Watkins, who was also chairman of London's first underground  railway company,   the Metropolitan  railway.  The second issue was that the Great Northern Railway also wanted a city centre station in Nottingham  and the two companies were "encouraged" to cooperate.  They needed to share resources but wanted to operate as two separate companies. A joint committee for the station was formed The result  was that the station would be very big and that, to give access to track level it would need to be constructed  in a massive cutting (58 feet deep at the north end, shallower to the south), with trains entering and exiting  via the tunnels but providing enough  space to operate two railway  company operations. Within the cutting the platforms were covered by a massive glass canopy.

So the new station consisted of the operations below ground level  where people got on and off trains, changed platforms  and observed passing  freight  trains on the many passing loops and at street level was a magnificent  late Victorian  station building serving both companies to provide  administration  space storage space and other infrastructure  for parcels (and other freight) . In addition it provided ticketing operations for two railway companies in a ticketing hall that was 100 feet long. Parts of the main building bridged the cutting.  The station building was also also the public face of the railway  which had recently changed its name to the Great Central  Railway and wanted to make a statement to the world that it had arrived. A major feature was the massive clocktower that is still standing today, as is the luxurious station hotel building constructed  next door. The whole structure was in red faced brick and Derbyshire limestone, the fashionable building material in late Victorian Britain.

The name of the station was achieved as a compromise.  Whilst the Great Central wanted to call the station Nottingham  Central the Great Northern preferred Nottingham  Joint Station . The name Nottingham  Victoria  was suggested by a local official (because it was due to open on the Queen's birthday). Since the GCRs Sheffield  station was also called Victoria they accepted.

 Before the station was built it was necessary to excavate a massive cutting down through  the unconsolidated overburden and  into the underlying Bunter Sandstone to the level of the tunnels. To put this "hole in the ground" in perspective the plan area was sufficient  to require the demolition of 1300 residential  properties and 20 pubs, a church, a workhouse and an old guildhall. The land cost alone was over £50million , in todays prices. It has been described as "as big as six football pitches". A total of 600,000 cubic yards of material was removed and stabilising some of the, near vertical, walls of this artificial  canyon required the building of a number of  massive retaining walls in the blue engineering  brick that was the first choice of engineering material at the time. The station opened in 1900

Only about 23 years since the station was built both the GCR  and GNR saw forced merger in the UK's railway  grouping exercise after WW1 and, later, Nationalisation to form British  Railways  in 1948.  The old GCR lines and many of the old GNR  were closed under the "Beeching" closures. Nottingham  Victoria  Station was closed in 1967. The "hole in the ground"  did offer opportunities  for development and one of the UK's first large, fully indoor, shopping malls, the Victoria  Centre, commonly known as " The Vic", was built here in between 1967 and 1972. The shopping mall itself has withstood the test of time quite well and remains very popular (although several full refurbishments have taken place, the last in 2015). The continued popularity is despite another shopping mall being opened nearby. One of the major attractions at the Victoria Centre is the famous , water powered, animated clock known as the Emett Clock or, more properly, the Aqua Horological Tintinabulator. Proximity to the main bus station must also help. The apartment/office block above the Vic Centre is still the tallest in Nottingham.

In the early 1960s, I remember entering Nottingham  station, by train from a small rural station south of Sheffield, and being blown away by the majesty of the place (which , at the time, was only about 60 years old). In 1977, as a student in Nottingham, I also recall viewing the deep and extensive remains of the cutting  (including the tunnel portal) from  the Victoria Centre bus station. It still looked impressive, if ripe for development. It took some time before that happened 

The eventual role of the remains of the cutting cavity, left after the initial redevelopment was,  the Victoria Centre's North car park, a multi level car park which is entered from the top and  drivers are forced to proceed to lower levels at the base of the cutting as the floors fill up. The car park covered one of the remaining exposed faces of the cutting but the north and  east faces were deliberately left exposed. At the time it was built (1990s) it was  the largest covered car park in Europe. The extent of the cutting is visible from numerous points in the car park and from Cairns St near to NG9 Locksmith and Security offices. Through the fence here you get a great view of a massive blue brick retaining wall and, depending on the time of year and plant overgrowth, you can still make out the remains of the north tunnel portal.

What we are left of this iconic transportation centre is thus two magnificent faces of the, massive, excavated cutting, some of the blue brick retaining walls (of impressive dimensions) and the former station clocktower in bright red brick with a limestone base, which would actually be worth a visit in its own right.