Consists of 2 buildings, one either side of the railway line. (1)
Widmerpool Railway Station was designed by the Midland Railway’s (MR) chief architect John Hol-loway Sanders (1825-84), noted for the Gothic railway stations he designed for the MR’s Settle to Carlisle line. Widmerpool was on the MR line between London and Nottingham that went via Melton Mowbray. This line was opened in 1878, with Widmerpool station (which was over a mile from the vil-lage, and around eight miles south-east of Nottingham) opening for freight in 1879, and passengers from 1880. Passenger use stopped in 1949, freight in 1965, and the line closed in 1968. After it went out of use in the mid-1960s, the station underwent extensive remodelling and became a public house, ‘The Schooner’ (later ‘The Pullman Inn’), which ceased trading in the mid-2010s. The building is on the east side of the north / south running railway track and is orientated on the same axis as the track. Historic photographs and mapping show the station building to have a two storey element under a pitched roof with its gable ends facing east and west, with a shorter two-storey hipped element ex-tending at right angles to the north and a longer, single-storey wing extending to the south containing a through passage. The current building is broadly rectangular in plan by way of a series of single-storey, mainly flat-roofed extensions which skirt and infill the more articulated footprint of the old station building. Materials for the older parts are brick under a slate roof. In the front, east facing ele-vation, only the first-floor gable end of the old station building is visible, the rest being a range of mid and later-C20 additions. The north and south end elevations are completely obscured by 1960s additions. All that is visible of the Victorian building at the rear, track facing elevation is at first-floor level where the gable end and north wing can be seen above the surrounding single-storey flat-roofed extensions. Historic photographs show Widmerpool Station to have been a modest structure which did not feature the multiple gables and decorated barge boards which J.H. Sanders employed on other stations in the development of the MR’s distinctive ‘Midland Gothic’ style. In addition to this, the building has been altered to a considerable degree, and its original design compromised by later additions. The station has some historic interest as the work of the MR’s chief architect towards the end of that railway company’s expansion with new lines. (2)

Data Held: Ground Photograph (Ground photograph). SNT2646.

2 BW print, EE13, EE14, SMR

Historic England, Widemerpool Railway Station HE Designation Notifiaction Report - Rejected (Unpublished document). SNT5524.

<1> Patrick A , undated, Pers Comm (Personal comment). SNT1129.