Architect
Format Milton Architects
Developer
Guinness Hermitage Housing Association
Contractor
not yet appointed
Planning Authority
Gosport Borough Council
Click any image for a larger view
Badly damaged during World War Two, and subsequently axed by Beeching, Gosport Railway Station has lain derelict for nearly 40 years. But not unloved. The grand colonnades, designed by Sir William Tite to please the eye of Queen Victoria as she passed through on her way to Osborne, have been colonised over the years by badgers, slow-worms and other protected species, and now local pressure has produced an imaginative restoration scheme which will form part of a new regeneration area.
On the booking hall side of the vanished tracks, community facilities and workshops will occupy the ground floor of the existing shell, with terraces formed from the old platform, and topped by maisonettes with their own terraces above the entrance colonnade. On the other side, the original arched screen wall fronts a range of town houses, with private gardens occupying the platform. Between the two, sunk to the original track level, is a communal garden. Further along the tracks, a second range of houses and flats forms a carefully composed end-stop to the whole development.
Another, more formal garden will be recreated from the original designs for the station approach, while the badgers and slow-worms will be carefully moved to a dedicated and protected ecological zone, with feeding and foraging corridors designed into the scheme. The car parking has been split between the original station approach and two other areas sunk to the original track level, each separate from pedestrian routes and with its own secure bicycle stores and short-stay cycle racks.
Materials for the new additions have been carefully chosen to complement the original Portland Stone colonnades and restored stucco work - London Stocks to match the existing brickwork, Douglas Fir boarding and grey standing-seam zinc - while the delicate arched windows will be recreated to the original pattern.
With a mixture of 35 houses, maisonettes and apartments extending across a complete range of tenures, and a density of 50 homes per hectare, Gosport Railway Station is a model demonstration of the scope that the sensitive restoration and re-use of a historic building can give for the creation of a sustainable urban community in the heart of a regeneration area. Queen Victoria might not have been amused, but Prince Albert would surely have approved.