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Summary

Description

Aberdeen Railway Company, 1849; extended late 19th century; altered and restored 2000. 2-platform through railway station with 2-storey, 4-bay (with later single storey wing) Italianate-influenced main offices on up platform with decorative timber awning on cast-iron columns with scrolled braces. Signal box on platform to left.

FURTHER DESCRIPTION: Squared, coursed dressed rubble, with bull-faced dressings. Round-arched openings, some as bipartite set into round-arched frame and some arcaded with pilaster mullions. Architraved keystoned window to centre SE. Cill course at 1st floor. Stone mullions; voussoirs.

SE (ENTRANCE) ELEVATION: advanced gable to left of centre with full-height framed bipartite window at ground, and smaller similar bipartite above; recessed bay at outer left with dwarf wall to left of steps rising to 2-leaf panelled timber door and glazed segmental fanlight. Modern 2-leaf glazed door with radial semicircular fanlight to outer right at ground, window with similar fanlight in penultimate bay to right, and 2 small bipartites above. Modern glazed canopy on decorative timber brackets and stone corbels, with single decorative metal column, between floors. Set-back, single storey wing to right, with 6 irregularly-disposed windows (3 to right as narrow lights); pair of modern wall-mounted metal lamps; modern stairs and disabled access ramp to right.

NE ELEVATION: single storey gabled bay with small horizontal barred window at centre and lean-to vertically-boarded timber shed at right.

SW ELEVATION: tall gabled bay, comprising segmental-arched vertically-boarded timber door to centre at ground, and bipartite window to centre at 1st floor.

NW (PLATFORM) ELEVATION: rear of station building to left with variety of panelled timber doors and windows, and vertically-boarded timber wall extending to outer right punctuated with windows and false doors. All behind platform awning (see below).

PLATFORM AWNING: platform at 1st floor level. Top-lit timber canopy with decorative pierced timber valance cantilevered over platform on cast columns with large scrolled ironwork brackets.

Predominantly timber sash and case windows. Grey slates with stone ridge. Coped ridge stacks with decorative arrowslits and circular cans. Deeply overhanging eaves with plain timber barge boards, exposed rafter ends, decorative timber brackets and snow boards. Cast-iron rainwater goods.

INTERIOR: seen (2006); largely remodelled retaining moulded plasterwork cornices and vertically-boarded timber dadoes to ticket hall and staircase.

SIGNAL BOX: (Map Ref: NO 86419, 86210): piend-roofed, rectangular-plan signal box comprising painted brick base with 2 blocked round-arched openings flanking shallow projection at centre, and small-pane glazing to timber frame windows to NW, NE and SW. Small boarded timber outshot to left at SE. Timber forestair to signal cabin. Grey slate.

Statement of Special Interest

Part of B-Group with Stonehaven Railway Station, Goods Shed (see separate listing).

Built in an attractive Italianate style, Stonehaven Station is the only surviving example of the original stations on Aberdeen Railway's main line.

Opened by the Aberdeen Railway Company on 30th October, 1849, with passenger trains starting on 1st November, 1849, and running only as far as Limpet Mill at that time. The Aberdeen link was completed by 1st April, 1850. Eeks described Stonehaven as 'a first class station on the Caledonian main line' and 'of northern health resorts it is perhaps the most readily reached from all parts of England and the south of Scotland'. The station was extended with an additional single storey wing in a similar style to the main building in the 1890s. Hume comments in 1977 on the 'unusually heavy cast-iron framed platform awning'. The example to the north platform has been removed more recently.

Signal boxes are a distinctive and now rare building type that make a significant contribution to Scotland's diverse industrial heritage. Of more than 2000 signal boxes built across Scotland by 1948, around 150 currently survive (2013) with all pre-1948 mechanical boxes still in operation on the public network due to become obsolete by 2021. The signal box at Stonehaven is a Caledonian Railway (Northern Division) Type 2 box installed in 1901 and sited notably and prominently on the platform to the left of the main station building. The Type 2 design by the Caledonian Railway first appeared in 1889 but very few now remain. There are two excellent off-platform examples at Stirling Station (see separate listing).

List description revised as part of Scottish Signal Box Review (2012-13).

References

Bibliography

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