Liverpool Crown Street Station
Liverpool Crown Street station was the western passenger terminus of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway.
The city authorities had been nervous about allowing a railway into the centre of the city - Crown Street was chosen for this reason; a goods line went to Wapping, adjacent to the Liverpool Docks.
Extensive tunnelling was required to carry the line both to Wapping goods station and Crown Street passenger station. To reach the Crown Street site a single-track 290yd tunnel was required. Work started on both tunnels in 1826 and was completed by 1829.
1830 Liverpool Crown Street was first used on 15 September for the formal opening of the railway. A short distance to the east was the portal of the Crown Street Tunnel. A plain but dignified stone-built two-storey building was built facing the departure platform. A wood and glass overall roof of shallow pitch covered the tracks.
Locomotives did not work into Crown Street, the limit for them being within the Edge Hill cutting at the eastern end of the Crown Street tunnel. Passenger trains were worked from the Edge Hill cutting by cable. They departed from Crown Street using gravity with a brakeman controlling the speed. At first there were 6 daily passenger departures and arrivals.
Crown Street quickly became inadequate for the number of passengers wanting to use the line.
1832 the Liverpool and Manchester Railway obtained an Act to build a line from Edge Hill to Lime Street on the edge of the town centre.
1833 Construction of the new line, which also required extensive tunnelling, began; it opened to passenger services on 15 August 1836. With the opening of the new Liverpool Lime Street station, Crown Street station closed to passengers.
The Crown Street site became a goods facility. The passenger station was demolished to provide more space for sidings.
1849 A double-track tunnel was built from the Edge Hill cutting to Crown Street; its eastern end was to the south of the original Crown Street and the Wapping tunnel portals. The new tunnel was shorter than the original as its western portal opened out into a cutting. The opening of the new tunnel allowed locomotives to run to Crown Street for the first time. The original tunnel with its cable and gravity-working continued to be used.
1867 'There are yet many amongst us in Liverpool who will remember the day when the first railway was on the site of the present coal-yards at Crown street, when — strange as it appears now — donkeys were employed to collect the coaches forming a train to avoid the tax levied upon horses, and this, too, at a time money was obtained to any amount for railway undertakings, and as freely spent. Subsequently Lime-street was made, which appeared a great undertaking at the time. ....'[1]
In 1895/6 a red-brick ventilation shaft for the Wapping Tunnel was built on part of the original station site. It was one of five such shafts built to allow locomotive working through the Wapping tunnel.
In the late 1960s the site remained in use as a rail-served coal yard. It closed completely in May 1972.
In the 1980s the site was landscaped as a public park and the western portal of the Crown Street tunnel was buried. The western portal of the 1849 tunnel was retained.
The above information has been largely condensed from the excellent here[2]
See Also
Sources of Information
- [2] Disused stations