St Pancras Station: London's Victorian Steampunk Cathedral

The "Cathedral of the Industrial Age"

• 🚂 St Pancras Station is described as the last monumental structure of the industrial age, built during the railway mania and serving as a prime example of the Midland Railway.
• 🏗️ Designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott, it was envisioned as a "railway palace" with a unique vitreous railway hall, a grand hotel, and a palace at the front.
• 💡 Innovations like revolving doors and elevators (levitating rooms) astonished visitors upon its opening in 1873.

Architectural Grandeur and Social History

• 🏛️ The Midland Grand Hotel, a crowning glory of the station, featured 300 rooms, each with a fireplace, and a grand staircase that was inaugurated by Queen Victoria.
• 👻 A tragic tale of a maid who fell pregnant and died by suicide is recounted, with her ghost said to still roam the station.
• 🚭 The Ladies' Smoking Room, initially intended for both sexes, became a ladies-only space, symbolizing a new era of liberation for women to travel independently.
• 👗 The architecture, particularly the staircase, was influenced by ladies' fashion, with its widening at the bottom to accommodate large skirts and crinolines.

Historical Context and Preservation

• 📜 Architect Thomas Hardy had a dramatic experience during the station's construction on former cemetery grounds, leading him to abandon architecture.
• 🖋️ Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley's mother were among those buried in the cemetery, as was William Jones, a tormentor of young Charles Dickens.
• 🕊️ Poet laureate Sir John Betjeman is credited with saving St Pancras Station from demolition in the 1960s.
• 🌉 The station's unique single-span roof, designed by William Henry Barlow, is a masterpiece of cast iron and glass, unique for its time.

Dickens, Railways, and Victorian Society

• 🚂 Charles Dickens, a descendant of Mary Wollstonecraft, was a fan of railways until a severe train crash in 1865 scarred him for life.
• 📖 Dickens was also a hero in the crash, helping survivors and retrieving his manuscript, though he was concerned about the story of his clandestine relationship becoming public.
• 👑 St Pancras competed with other stations like King's Cross, which was historically significant and even featured in the Harry Potter films.
• 🍳 A traditional British railway custom, the "train drivers breakfast," involved cooking bacon and eggs on a shovel over the fire hole of a steam locomotive.

Spiritualism and Victorian Beliefs

• 👻 The Victorian era saw a fascination with death and the afterlife, leading to the development of large cemeteries and spiritualist practices.
• 🕯️ Mediums conducted séances, sometimes using fraudulent methods, to communicate with the deceased, with practices like spirit photography and ectoplasmic phenomena being explored.
• 👻 One spiritualist recounts an apparition of a young man in a library, only to realize there were no men in the group he was with.

St Pancras's Enduring Legacy and Steampunk Appeal

• 🍺 In its early years, St Pancras's basement served as a massive storage facility for breweries, highlighting the era's high demand for beer and the resulting sanitation issues in London.
• 💧 The station's history is intertwined with London's infrastructure development, including the construction of its first major sewer system and pumping stations for fresh water.
• ⚙️ St Pancras Station is a real temple for Steampunk enthusiasts, embodying the era's fascination with steam, mechanics, Victorian aesthetics, and romanticism.
• 🎨 Steampunk is described as a way of life, focusing on finding new aesthetics in the past and bringing them into the future, often by reimagining modern technology with a Victorian twist.
• 🌟 The station continues to invite dreams, standing as a relic of the age of steam and mechanics, even amidst modernizations and the departure of Eurostar trains.
• 🐦 The station also serves as a unique environment for falconry, with trained hawks used to keep pigeons away from the platforms, adding another layer to its historical and functional narrative.