Through Time
11 total works
Before the emergence of the steam railway rocketed the likes of Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Robert Stephenson - the great Victorian engineers - into the limelight, there was a 'Colossus' who dominated the engineering scene and laid the foundations for what was to follow. Thomas Telford built a series of ambitious road and canal projects, as well as many notable bridges - including the ground-breaking Menai Suspension Bridge - numerous harbour works and buildings.
Contrasting old and new images, John Christopher examines Telford's principal works to highlight his diverse, but often overshadowed, achievements. These include not only the Menai bridge, of course, but also the other masonry and iron bridges, the Ellesmere Canal with its aqueducts at Pontcysyllte and Chirk, the Caledonian Canal slicing though Scotland's Great Glen, and the A5 road running between London and Holyhead.
Contrasting old and new images, John Christopher examines Telford's principal works to highlight his diverse, but often overshadowed, achievements. These include not only the Menai bridge, of course, but also the other masonry and iron bridges, the Ellesmere Canal with its aqueducts at Pontcysyllte and Chirk, the Caledonian Canal slicing though Scotland's Great Glen, and the A5 road running between London and Holyhead.
With its famous hotel, St Pancras is now the London terminus of the Eurostar, with a high speed rail link to the Kent coast and the Channel Tunnel. But it was not always so. Once nearly redundant and threatened with demolition, the station was the London terminus of the Midland Railway, and could proclaim at its opening the largest single span roof in the world. Over GBP800 million saw St Pancras restored and rebuilt for the modern day. Described now as the 'world's most wonderful railway station', St Pancras is a paragon of Gothic architecture. The St Pancras Renaissance London Hotel utilised large parts of the Midland Grand Hotel and opened in 2011, exactly 138 years after the original was opened. John Christopher tells the story of the rise, decline and rise again of St Pancras as London's international station.
Victoria Station is the second in the Through Time series on London's famous railway termini. 115 million people pass through Victoria each year, making the station London's second busiest after Waterloo. The station is not one, but actually two halves, one built for the London, Brighton & South Coast railway, the other for the London, Chatham & Dover Railway, with the first of these halves opening in October 1860, and the other following in August 1862. As such, its architecture and design has always been a mating of two distinctive styles, each with its own booking office, stationmaster, platform numbering and timetable. The original LBSCR station was plain, with a simple iron girder roof, while the LCDR station had a wide canopy roof. Various rebuildings see us with the station of today. The amalgamation of various lines operating into the South East and Southern England into the Southern Railway, saw the stations finally being joined as one. Victoria has been the gateway to the continent, with boat trains running to various ports in the South Coast and is also a major underground station on the Victoria, District and Circle Lines.
Wotton-under-Edge, standing at the foot of the Cotswolds and tracing its roots back to Saxon times, has seen much change over the last 150 years. The industrial revolution, and the transformation of the transport industry, has greatly affected both the architecture and everyday practices of the town. Some of these changes have been small and gradual, some monumental. Once-empty streets are now cluttered with parked cars, new housing estates have spread outwards and the old woollen mills have found new life for a variety of businesses. This book will take readers on a photographic guided tour of Wotton-under-Edge, past and present, and highlight some of the startling changes and stolid similarities of the town.
Bournemouth Through Time is a wonderful collection of old and new photographs of Bournemouth. The older images are printed alongside a contemporary full colour photograph, which illustrates the same scene. The contrasting illustrations show how the area has changed and developed during the last 100 years. The photographs illustrate shops, schools, garages, churches, houses and street scenes.As you browse through the photographs, you will notice the increase in the number of vehicles on the roads and the number of residents, how shops and other businesses have evolved and the changes and developments in modes of transportation and the architecture of the area.
King's Cross station was the terminus of the Great Northern Railway and was opened in 1852. Designed by Lewis Cubitt, it replaced a temporary station at Maiden Lane. It established itself as the London terminus of what is now known as the East Coast Main Line to Edinburgh. From 1862, at 10 a.m. every weekday, the Flying Scotsman left King's Cross for the north, initially taking over ten hours to complete the journey but now taking only four hours from Edinburgh to London. Some of Britain's most famous locomotives, from the Ivatt Atlantics to the A3 and A4 Pacifics, Deltics and HSTs, have sped north from King's Cross.The underground station below the main line station encompasses six lines and was the scene of the disastrous King's Cross fire in 1987, following which it was rebuilt. King's Cross itself has been redeveloped many times over the years, and a fictional platform (93/4) made famous in the Harry Potter novels. Its Grade 1 listed facade has been revamped and the station improved to increase capacity.
The first Waterloo Station opened in 1848 and the current building was completed in 1922, after a huge rebuilding programme started in 1899. Catering for suburban traffic, Waterloo is also the major station for trains to Southampton, Portsmouth and Bournemouth and once served the famous boat trains. Close by was the London Necropolis Railway station, which took coffins to Brookwood Cemetery. This fascinating selection of photographs traces some of the many ways in which Waterloo Station has changed and developed over the years. For a time, the station was the base for Eurostar trains and a new Crossrail project may see Waterloo connected with Euston. Now Britain's busiest and largest station, Waterloo was originally owned by the London & South Western Railway and first known as Waterloo Bridge Station. John Christopher tells the story of Waterloo from its early beginnings, when the LSWR extended its route from Nine Elms, to the present day.
Isambard Kingdom Brunel was Britain's greatest engineer, he was the man who built everything on a huge scale, he built Britain's biggest ship, some of Britain's most spectacular bridges, a tunnel under the Thames and the finest railway line in Britain, the London to Bristol route of the Great Western Railway. Everything he did was on a scale not seen before, not just in Britain, but in the world. Brunel left a legacy of industrial architecture and design, from the vaulted roof of Paddington station to the SS Great Britain, the first true ocean greyhound, from the Clifton Suspension Bridge to the Tamar Bridge, which bears his name on its approaches. His life was one of superlatives - bigger, wider, taller and faster. Nearly drowning in the Thames Tunnel, he eventually suffered a stroke aboard his Great Eastern, the world's largest vessel for almost half a century, and died two days before her maiden voyage. As the historian Dan Cruikshank put it, Brunel was quite simply 'a one-man Industrial Revolution'.
Here, John Christopher tells the story of the man and his tunnels, bridges, railways, ships and buildings, with many new illustrations accompanying the old, showing the changes time has made to Brunel's greatest legacy - the things he designed and built that we still take for granted and use every day, over a century and a half since his death.
Here, John Christopher tells the story of the man and his tunnels, bridges, railways, ships and buildings, with many new illustrations accompanying the old, showing the changes time has made to Brunel's greatest legacy - the things he designed and built that we still take for granted and use every day, over a century and a half since his death.
Paddington is part of a hub of underground stations and is home to the world's most famous bear, named after the station. Revel in the selection of images of Paddington Through Time and see how Brunel's masterpiece has stood the test of time. 'I am going to design, in a great hurry, and I believe to build, a station after my own fancy,' stated Isambard Kingdom Brunel in 1851. That station, the second to bear the name 'Paddington', was to be another Brunel masterpiece. His delight at the prospect of building a replacement and permanent station at Paddington is self-evident. The new station was to be built on the plot of land just south of the Bishop's Road Bridge, defined by Eastbourne Terrace and Praed Street on two sides, and by London Street and the canal on the northeast side. Because the new station would be located almost entirely within a cutting, there would be no grand exterior, and instead, Brunel impressed with his immense roof of iron and glass. Paddington is currently in the middle of a huge redevelopment that has seen it retain much of its nineteenth-century design, but updated to suit traffic flows of today. Millions pass through the station weekly, both to the West and Wales and to Heathrow on the Heathrow Express.
Central London is encircled by some of the finest railway architecture in the world. The great termini were built to impress, they were bold exclamation marks at the end of the line, announcing the railway's and the passenger's arrival in the capital. As Sir John Betjeman once said, 'If the station houses are the equivalent of parish churches, then the termini are the cathedrals of the railway age.' Each one has its own distinctive character, and despite the passage of time they have much to offer.
John Christopher examines the principal termini in a clockwise order, starting with Victoria in the west, then Paddington and along the Euston Road to include Marylebone, Euston, St Pancras and King's Cross, with Liverpool Street and Fenchurch Street to the east, before continuing back along the north bank of the Thames for Cannon Street, Blackfriars (Holborn Viaduct) and Charing Cross. South of the river there are London Bridge and Waterloo.
John Christopher examines the principal termini in a clockwise order, starting with Victoria in the west, then Paddington and along the Euston Road to include Marylebone, Euston, St Pancras and King's Cross, with Liverpool Street and Fenchurch Street to the east, before continuing back along the north bank of the Thames for Cannon Street, Blackfriars (Holborn Viaduct) and Charing Cross. South of the river there are London Bridge and Waterloo.
Built as the London terminus of the London & Birmingham Railway in July 1837, Euston was London's first intercity railway station. Originally designed by Philip Hardwick, the station entrance was through the world's largest Doric propylaeum, which became known as the Euston Arch. In the 1840s the station was expanded greatly and by 1923 express trains left Euston regularly for Wales, Scotland and the major cities of England, including Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool. In 1961 - 2, the original station was demolished, to a huge outcry, and a new modernist station built in its place. In 2007, it was announced that the station would be rebuilt once more, but these plans fell by the wayside and in 2011 a new plan was announced. Euston is one of London's busiest stations, and may eventually be the terminus of the HS2 line. Join the author on a journey through time, telling the story of Euston from 1837 to the present day.