Regenerating Railway Stations
EP Architects have spent the past five years working with community rail partnerships to renovate and repurpose redundant station buildings across the South of England, completing over twelve sites to date. Their work with Hampshire Community Rail Partnership has taken in stations from Shawford to Sherborne, with the Shawford scheme winning the Contribution to Society award at the 2024 Network Rail Awards. The practice recently published Regenerating Railway Stations, a book produced in collaboration with HCRP and contractor Avon Construction and distributed free of charge to rail partnerships and senior figures across the industry.
Sam Sherwood-Hale spoke to Gary Wilburn, Managing Director of EP Architects, about the challenge of rescuing neglected Victorian station buildings, the power of community rail partnerships, and why regeneration is the most important architectural cause of our time.
E P Architects have spent the past five years working with community rail partnerships to renovate and repurpose redundant station buildings across the South of England, completing over twelve sites to date. Their work with Hampshire Community Rail Partnership has taken in stations from Shawford to Sherborne, with the Shawford scheme winning the Contribution to Society award at the 2024 Network Rail Awards. The practice recently published Regenerating Railway Stations, a book produced in collaboration with HCRP and contractor Avon Construction and distributed free of charge to rail partnerships and senior figures across the industry.
SSH: How did you start working on railway station projects?
GW: It’s really only in the last five and a half years since I started EP Architects. I’d had my own practice for 30-odd years before that, but I wanted to focus specifically on sustainable regenerative projects with positive impact. Through a lifelong friend, Nick Farthing, who chairs the Hampshire Community Rail Partnership, I got into this work. When I set up the new practice, he knew we were very sustainably focused and asked if I’d be interested in working with them.
They’d arranged leases on one or two buildings. They’ve now got leases on about a dozen stations. They’re a CIC, so everything they make gets ploughed back in, and most of the leases they negotiate are on peppercorn rents. So, we can be quite creative about the use and allow this to be determined by the community.
Five and a half years ago we had that conversation and here we are. We’re on project 12 or 15, not just with them. We’re working with Greater Anglia, Blackmoor Vale over in Dorset, and trying to find contacts in Gloucestershire and elsewhere. It’s been an absolute joy, an amazing experience, difficult and challenging, but rewarding.
SSH: And how have you found working on railway projects specifically?
GW: I thought I’d seen it all. I’ve built airports, major retail destinations, but the railways, it’s a complex process to go through whatever you’re doing at any station, whether it’s listed or new, because of the insurances and the protocol. You’re dealing with life and death. It’s serious stuff. In some respects, in terms of process, it’s some of the most challenging work I’ve ever done.
It’s about navigating and trying to find out: is there a way to raise funds to do things? Can we bring the populace with us? Hence engagement with the public and the locality is really important. There needs to be a clear purpose.
SSH: Tell me about the community groups you work with.
GW: Most stations around the country have an amazing number of volunteers. We do lots of work with “friends of” groups. We’re working with the Friends of Brandon Station up in Norfolk and Suffolk, and the Friends of New Milton Station in the New Forest.
That’s a really interesting one because it was the first building in the town. The town erupted around it after the railway arrived. They built the railway to a town called Milton, and New Milton sprang up because that’s where they built the station. The station master’s house is literally number one New Milton.
That’s wonderful because in terms of graphics and opportunities to promote merchandise and all sorts of things, the team there are being very creative to raise funds to pay our fees. It’s different in every single place.
SSH: Can you give me some background on your career before this work?
GW: I’ve been a practitioner in architecture and design for 40 years this year. I originally studied interior design because I wanted to really focus on people and the use of buildings. I worked in London, then moved to Hampshire 30-odd years ago and formed my own practice in 1990.
I did have a time working with London Underground Limited and worked on a number of underground stations, but I was so young it just sort of passed me by. It’s only been in later life and after lots of experience that we’ve begun focusing on historic buildings. I’ve got the right team around me now. It’s very specific and technically demanding work.
SSH: How common is it in your industry for someone to come to heritage buildings after working in other sectors?
GW: I think I’m an unusual animal. I’ve come from an overtly commercial background: airports, high street retail for famous brands, visitor centres, hospitality. All these different things, commercial background, developing projects that are going to be resilient but also profitable. In that regard, I suspect I’m unusual in coming into this regenerative area.
I am blessed with a great deal of knowledge and experience in most of the areas we are now repurposing these lovely buildings for. For instance, cafés. I’ve done hundreds and hundreds. When we come to put a café into somewhere like Shawford, I know how to help them.
SSH: You’ve written about the concept of ‘regenerative’ work. Can you explain what you mean by that?
GW: ‘Sustainable’ has been overused and I replaced it in my own mind years ago with “resilience” because sustainable became just a fashionable and overused word. This regenerative thing is fascinating. There is a real love, joy, and care, not just from the volunteers at each of these stations but from senior management to the local guys on the local stations. They really love what they do.
I’ve always had to build and argue the need and the purpose of what we’re designing. Well, with stations, there’s no argument about them being there. They’ve just fallen out of favour due to Beeching in the 60s and key cost cutting events over time.
SSH: Can you give me an example of a recent project?
GW: Romsey Station. We just gained planning permission last week for proposals we’ve been working on for nearly five years. One of the big discussions has been what it should be used for. It’s a complex three-and[1]a-half storey building.
To my knowledge, maybe 20-odd years ago somebody raised some money to commission someone like us to do some work. But they thought it was going to be used for accommodation and that was just the wrong purpose. It wasn’t going to work for all sorts of reasons.
We’ve come at it in a different direction, thinking we must achieve access to all the floors of the building, DDA compliance, so everybody can access it. That’s just our view. I think it should be made a national requirement when we’re regenerating buildings.
SSH: So, access for all is a key priority for you?
GW: If we’re to really repurpose a building and use all the levels in an equitable fashion, we want everybody to get some enjoyment from that. That can add cost, but of course you’ve got the whole building structure there and ready, provided you’ve managed to get the operator or Network Rail engaged with putting the building back in reasonable order.
There are places I go where the roofs have caved in. They’re in a real mess, which need open heart surgery as opposed to a bit of cream applied, so to speak. The serious locations where the place is in very poor condition, many people in the railways just knock them over because it’s easier than getting someone to commission my team (or others) to redesign the place, raise loads of money through the community rail partnerships, and go through this long journey of rescuing the building.
As a result, we’ve got a great relationship with a whole host of organisations including SAVE. I did a little bit of consultation with them on Liverpool Street. I’ve been involved with large scale development all my professional life. I’ve probably done similar things myself where budgets and ROI demand over development. Many of the figures around what were being discussed in terms of costings at Liverpool Street were into the hundreds of millions when actually it was into the tens of millions. Budgets get over inflated and rationale with it.
SSH: Funding seems central to these projects. How does that work?
GW: I don’t think most architects do this. Again, this is just due to my commercial background. In the economic situation we find ourselves in, if you don’t take action yourself, it doesn’t happen. Most development suffers because they look to return their investment in two or three years. Well, if you’re going to do that, it’s not going to be very sustainable. Whereas if you can look at a 20-year payback, if you can look at patient capital combined with natural capital, the natural environment, we really need partners who can accommodate the return on investment being over a longer period.
We have to tap into all these various streams. The operator may be able to give money towards certain elements of the project. The Railway Heritage Trust, and the wonderful people there, Tim and Anna, they are funded by Network Rail, but I think they get something like two and a half million a year. They’ve been incredibly supportive. If I’m in the commercial world, I’ve never had anybody come over and say, ‘Oh, we’ll put 40 per cent in at the beginning.’ As long as you comply with the heritage requirements, which we are, we’re wanting to bring these places back to life. We research carefully the heritage colours it would have been originally and study the joinery detailing to be true to the building. We don’t take the sash windows out and put poor replacements back. We repair them or make new to match the original.
The Railway Heritage Trust is perfect. I hope we’re music to their ears because we’re doing what they seek to achieve. But they can’t fund everything. They can’t give 40 per cent on every single project we look at. But they’ve been incredibly supportive and I would give them a massive shout out.
We might approach philanthropic investment, local wealthy people, local groups and councils. We’ve had community interest levy funding, Section 106. I think railway buildings, because they contribute to society and community, are a perfect route for some of that investment to come back from councils when they have the money available.
There are all sorts of bids that are made within and outside railway organisations. We’ve just had a bid turned down on one project. Can’t figure out why. But you can’t win them all. You’ve got to spread very wide and deep to find the supporters from a financial point of view. The average cost site to site range between £500,000 to £1.5 million.
Community rail partnerships seem to be a good place to start as a base because someone has to be assigned the lease. Most of those are set up as CICs, community interest companies, so they’ve got the structure in place to take a lease on. But Hampshire, for instance, just had to renegotiate a few months ago the leases on all the buildings they’ve got. They had to pay approximately £4,000 for each one and they’ve got about a dozen. So out of nowhere they’ve got to find £48,000. Why? Why not just change the date on the lease?
I’m hoping that at high level we need to raise some serious chunks of money. Ideally, we’ll get some research projects prepared so we can go to central government if we have to and say, ‘Right, let’s do 20 of these projects or 40, not one or two, not scraping around raising money in each and every case.’ If we could construe a central fund that would allow us to do 10 or 20 or something with real impact, then people would listen.
SSH: Tell me about Regenerating Railway Stations, the book you’ve published.
GW: We’ve had universal support for this book that Nick and I and our friends at Avon Construction have published. We haven’t put it out for people to buy yet. We printed the first batch and we’re handing them out for free to people like yourselves, the 76 community rail partnerships in the country, and to Lord Peter Hendy. Nick handed a copy to him at a recent event, and Peter said, “Nick, this is hugely topical, thank you ever so much.” We hope to continue this conversation and build industry and wider support.
Tim Dunn was very impressed. Anyone we’ve talked to that’s either in the media or in some sort of political position of influence has been impressed. South Western Railway, all the people we’ve been working with, they all endorsed it and have actually contributed with supportive text.
SSH: What do you hope the impact of Regenerating Railway Stations will be?
GW: I think we’re raising awareness. We’ll get more copies printed and we’ll continue for now to give them out for free. If we charge for that book, we could probably do it on repeat order at Amazon or wherever for about £15 per copy. But what we’ll probably aim to do is later this year, we’ll do an updated version, a second edition, because there’s a lot happening all the time. We would add more case studies and update those already featured.
We want to push this further up the agenda. It might be, without being too presumptuous, why couldn’t we broaden the conversation with senior figures in the industry? Most of them are very approachable people and appear supportive.
SSH: How does public consultation work for these projects?
GW: We haven’t really covered this in any detail in the book, but it is essential. The result of it is, we get very strong support. I’ve never known that level of engagement. At the best we’ve had 60-70 per cent support at best on big projects I’ve done in the past, but with Romsey and Shawford, for example, the support is 99 per cent positive!
On these projects we work hard at making sure it’s what the public want before we even see them, but we get overwhelming support. Then I can write to the planners and say, ‘We’ve got strong support to do this. There’s a demand’. Most people, particularly young people or grandparents with grandkids and teenagers ask, ‘Is there a job for me? Would there be an opportunity to work there?’ Well, yes, there might be.
When we opened Shawford, the sheer response we’ve had from customers and the people that are working there, there’s real pride in it. Everybody puts in more effort than they’re paid to do because you just want to see the thing succeed. And that generates a lot of good feeling. In current economic circumstances, anything that creates some joy and positivity and goodwill has got to be taken seriously.
SSH: And the Community Rail Partnerships do other work as well?
GW: The Hampshire Community Rail Partnership, just to give them a shout out, they do some amazing stuff. Two of their sites, one at Petersfield and one at Swaythling in Southampton, they’ve got food banks. They’ve served a tremendous number of meals.
It’s very humbling. The Hampshire Community Rail Partnership and their team are there gathering food that’s being thrown away at all the local shops and stores and handing it out to the public that are queuing up to feed their families. I’m so proud of what they do. But it’s sad we rely on such fantastic community group work.
When we open in Romsey, when we’ve raised the money, and also New Milton hopefully will follow on quite quickly, and Sherborne in Dorset, there’s many we’re working on, but we need to be doing more, and we need the quantum to increase. The restrictor is funding.
We’ve got to get this up the agenda if we’re to touch a significant number of these buildings. But if we don’t get our act together, in a few years’ time many of the buildings will be lost because they’ll just fall down.
SSH: Can you give me an example of the state some of these buildings are in?
GW: If you take Romsey as an example, it’s been sat empty for somewhere in the region of 50 years, gathering pigeon droppings. The pigeon waste is a metre deep. We’ve got to put people in white suits, a bit like removing asbestos. It’s toxic waste.
For maybe 20 years to my knowledge, the roof was leaking, so there’s damage inside. But more importantly, the pigeons were getting in and out. It’s like a scene from a horror movie when you go in some of these places.
I think you come back to major political issues of funds. In fairness, Network Rail and all the rest, they’re up against it every day. They’ve got to keep the railways rolling. Buildings are not a priority for them. Buildings are not seen, I don’t believe, as an asset at all on their books.
The fact that we’re allowing these buildings, hence why I’m involved with SAVE, on occasion to get into such a state of disrepair, we’re having to get local MPs involved, local press involved, all sorts of people, so that we can try and raise funds to literally save the building. Because if we don’t take some action, it will fall down or the operator will turn up and just bulldoze it and stick it in a skip because it’s dangerous.
SSH: What makes these Victorian and Edwardian buildings so appealing?
GW: The buildings were built with care, with enormous passion and skill in Victorian and earlier times. I think one of the reasons the public is so engaged, we all love them, they love Georgian and Edwardian houses because of the size of the windows and natural light internally. We believe such principles should still be applied when designing all buildings.
For the younger generation, looking at these lovely railway buildings, there’s nothing not to like. The response to them, I think, is really quite primal. It’s quite instinctive. You look at the thing, you think, ‘Oh yeah, it’s lovely.
SSH: Just before we finish, can you sum up what sustainability means to you in the context of these railway projects?
GW: I think I’ve returned to the word environmental because it’s more of an honest word. Sustainability is resilience, providing a solution which is good for the planet, good for us, good for humans. That responds to us in our work, play, living, whatever it is, and that we get joy from and that absolutely embodies wellbeing.
This regenerative thing, we use the word regenerative. There’s massive debate as to whether we should be building new buildings. Certainly, in our view, in my view, we should be regenerating and repurposing existing buildings before we build anything new. It’s so important for your generation and mine. I just became a grandparent in November. What’s my grandson looking forward to? We need to be taking more care, whatever you believe.
Any of the modern buildings will decay faster than these lovely things we’re talking about. Some of it would last, I don’t know, 30, 40, 50 years, whereas Victorian buildings, even if they’re neglected, will last 100, 150 years. If they’re cared for and maintained, they’ll last for 500 years.
It’s no different with historic station buildings. You look after them. You clear the gutters of debris. You make sure the pigeons don’t get in. You treat it with love and care. And it’s going to give back for generations.
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