The Victorian Society
Save Liverpool Street Station
We need your donations to fight an expensive legal battle to save Liverpool Street Station from demolition and prevent a tower being built over the concourse.
Story
Help us stop the worst plans for heritage this century!
Network Rail wants to demolish a huge chunk of the listed Liverpool Street Station and build a 21-storey tower above the concourse. This is an outrageous and unjustified way to treat listed buildings in a conservation area. It would replace natural light with predominately artificial. The development would intereact with views of St Paul’s Cathedral. If approved it would set a dangerous precedent which would mean that no listed building in the country is safe from destruction. Worse it will embolden Network Rail to try and do the same at other city centre stations where land value is high.
Griff Rhys Jones OBE, President of LISSCA and the Victorian Society said,
The only way to fight this is through the law. Which is on our side. But that will cost money. And they will have oodles of it. I am giving two thousand. Please help give us the strength to save the dignity of Liverpool Street Station. Every penny counts.
This case raises significant issues. This means we need your help to raise an estimated £60,000 to meet the legal costs of a public inquiry! Please support us by contributing to our fighting fund, thank you.
If Network Rail and ACME's proposals go ahead it would mean:
A huge tower looming above the station, hotel and conservation area
Many years of disruption for commuters
Demolition of the listed concourse
Plunging the Victorian train sheds and concourse into gloom in the shadow of, and under a tower
Protection of our heritage anywhere in the country is totally undermined
What is the justification for offices in the area?
A couple of visuals of what Network Rail are proposing
The Liverpool Street Station Campaign (LISSCA), which stopped the station’s total demolition in the 1970s at a public inquiry in the 1970s, has been reformed to stop these new plans.
The LISSCA committee is comprised of The Victorian Society, The Twentieth Century Society, Historic Buildings & Places, The Georgian Group, SAVE Britain’s Heritage, The Spitalfields Trust, Civic Voice, London Historians, The Betjeman Society, The Council for British Archaeology, and the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society.
The joint campaign of these major voices for heritage and conservation is extremely rare and reflects how seriously they view the threat to Liverpool Street Station, the former Great Eastern Hotel (now the Andaz London Liverpool Street) and the Bishopsgate Conservation Area.
Photo credits:
Concourse of Liverpool Street Station: Joris Vanbillemont
All visualisations of Network Rail's proposals: (c) ACME
Historic View of Liverpool Street, and the hotel (c) The Bishopsgate Institute
