Paddington and not the bear!

History Meeting January

On a cold January evening the attendance at the meeting was a little low, however those not present missed a very informative talk, by longstanding member of the Society and lifelong devotee of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Mr Glyn Williams. Mr Williams has given many talks over the years about the achievements of Brunel and this time he took the terminus at Paddington as his topic.

The lecture began with on the layout of the station which began with a small entity in 1833 between Bristol, Temple Meads and London. The new railways could not proceed into central London and following abandonment of an attempt at Lambeth since the population was north of the Thames, the GWR looked at Vauxhall, before linking with the line from Birmingham at the rural location of Paddington. A further attempt at Euston came to nothing because of a clash of broad and standard gauge lines.

The building of the line began in 1835, at Bishop Walk in a small valley of the Bourne or Serpentine, which is now underground. The cost was monumental for the time at £6,500,000. The initial terminus was made of wood , but by 1850 the present station was built accommodating 10 railway tracks with 3 for arrivals and two for departures, this was serviced by 62 “Firefly” locomotives, and passengers went between platforms via a “transverse”. Although Brunel gets most of the credit for the design, the decorations so associated with the arches was the work of architect, Matthew Digby Wyatt.The Great Western Royal Hotel was built and is now part of the Hilton chain, this was renovated in the 1930, and the work of Phillip Charles Hardwick.

Three underground railways emanate from Paddington, the first built shortly after Brunel’s death in 1859, by Fowler and Benjamin Baker, as the first “cut and cover” railway in the world. Baker was a genius and designed the Metropolitan Railway in New York, and he also built the original Aswan dam on the Nile. He was also instrumental in designing a ship to carry “Cleopatra’s Needle”, as a gift to the UK from Egypt. The ship was called unsurprisingly Cleopatra! Remarkably, Baker had trained at the Neath Abbey Works! Later a second station was built at Parade Road , which was not originally called Paddington.

Mr Williams concluded his talk with a discussion on the architectural wonders of the station including reference to a certain Michael Bond character whose statue is in the station and his fondness for marmalade sandwiches is well known.

Mr David Woosnam, thanked Mr Williams for a very memorable and informative talk.

Trefor Jones.