Documents

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• Type

  Map

  Title

  Map for Kingussie Railway Station (LB36282)

  Download(https://portal.historicenvironment.scot/document/600039348)

Summary

Description

Dated 1894, Kingussie Railway Station was designed by William Roberts for the Highland Railway Company. The main station building is a long, single-storey south facing range on the 'down' platform. The station building is constructed in coursed grey rubble with contrasting tooled ashlar sandstone dressings. It has a 20-bay frontage to the platform with transomed bipartite and tripartite windows. A deep five-bay canopy supported by cast-iron columns with decorative brackets shelters the eastern half of platform front (valences gone). There are two crowstepped entrances to the rear.

There is a two-storey, three-bay accommodation building attached to the rear of the main station building. This was probably added around 1913. Its off-centre entrance opening, flanked by a narrow window, has been converted to a window opening with paired windows to the centre bay above. There are long and short margins to the window openings and angles. There is two and four-pane glazing throughout. The roof is covered in slates with crowstepped gables and end and ridge corniced chimneystacks.

Dating from 1894, the cast iron pedestrian footbridge has a lattice balustrade and two lamp standards adapted to electric light.

The plank and strip weather-boarded, rectangular-plan signal box by Mackenzie and Holland for the Highland Railway Company (located at grid reference NH 75692 00412) dates from 1894 and was extended to the west by Network Rail in 2007. It has four-pane glazed windows to the locking room. The signal cabin is reached by a metal forestair (originally of timber construction). There is continuous glazing to the operating room with four-pane glazing to the platform side, returning to gables. It has projecting eaves and timber bargeboarding. The large extension to the west is supported on a metal frame. The roof is covered in corrugated sheeting (the original slate roof and timber forestair having been replaced in the early 1970s).

The detached, T-plan, former station master's house, located at grid reference NH 75673 00433, dates from 1863 and is designed in a Tudor-style. It is located to the east of the current railway station range (dated 1894) and is set within a small, grassed plot with two timber coal sheds and bounded by a timber fence. The property is one-and-a-half storeys high and is three bays wide to the platform elevation. There is a central stone porch with an arched entrance opening and a narrow window in the east elevation. It is constructed in coursed rubble stone and the platform elevation has ashlar margins and quoins and Tudor hoodmoulds above the windows. The remaining elevations are harled. The rear section of the house is slightly taller in height with a pedimented dormer breaking the roof eaves along the east elevation. The window openings are a mixture of shapes, some are gothic arched openings, and some are rectangular. The windows are later replacements. The roof is covered in slates with timber bargeboards, overhanging eaves and exposed rafter ends. The house has three end chimneystacks and a taller chimneystack in the rear roof pitch (east side).

Statement of Special Interest

The line (and the earlier station on this site) was opened in 1863 by the Inverness and Perth Junction Railway. The detached, Tudor-style stationmaster's house was constructed at this time and is shown on the 1^st Edition Ordnance Survey map of 1869 as a rectangular plan building with its central porch.

Kingussie Station was rebuilt by The Highland Railway Company in 1891-4. The current station buildings, including footbridge and signal box, date from 1894 and were designed by William Roberts for the Highland Railway (Gifford, p.91). Additions to the rear of the station were added in 1913. These included additional apartments for the station manager, new staff dormitories and luncheon basket rooms (North Star and Farmers' Chronicle).

Kingussie is a substantial, well-detailed example of a late-19^th century Highland Railway station complex with associated footbridge, signal box and station accommodation. The decorated brackets and cast-iron columns to the glazed awning (altered) of the station range are good representatives of Highland Railway architecture and add to the wider interest.

Signal boxes are a distinctive and increasingly 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 1894 signal box is a 'Type 3' box by McKenzie and Holland. This important signalling manufacturer provided signalling for much of the Highland Railway during the late-19^th century. Other survivals of this once common type are the large example at Aviemore Station (LB52063) and a little altered box at Boat of Garten North (LB258) on the preserved Strathspey Railway line.

List Description and statutory address revised as part of Scottish Signal Box Review (2012-13).

Statutory address and listed building record revised in 2025. Previously listed as 'KINGUSSIE RAILWAY STATION INCLUDING STATION HOUSE, FOOTBRIDGE AND SIGNAL BOX'.

References

Bibliography

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