Demolished Victorian station canopy to be rebuilt

A heritage railway is working to reinstate a Victorian-era station canopy to complete the restoration of a 19th-century station.

The wooden canopy over the entrance to Corfe Castle Station, in Dorset, was demolished by British Railways in the 1950s, before the closure of the line in 1972.

The project by Swanage Railway is the final phase of the restoration of the grade II listed building and will return it to the way it looked when the line opened in 1885.

The charity that runs the railway has launched a £60,000 fundraising appeal to help pay for the work.

Deputy station master David Scott, who has volunteered on the railway for 11 years, said: "The canopy was an important practical and architectural feature and its removal in the mid-1950s – probably due to the wood it was made of becoming rotten and British Railways being unwilling to repair and restore it – left the entrance to the forecourt car park side of the station somewhat bare and exposed to the weather.

"This is an exciting project and a chance to make Corfe Castle station complete again by fully returning the building back to the way that it looked when the first train ran on the new Swanage branch line in May 1885, when Queen Victoria was on the throne and William Gladstone was the British prime minister."

British Rail closed Corfe Castle station on 3 January 1972, along with the ten mile branch line from Wareham to Swanage.

The windows were boarded up and, during that summer, the railway tracks were lifted.

Work on rebuilding the railway started at a derelict Swanage station in 1976 and, in 1990, Swanage Railway volunteers re-laid the tracks through Corfe Castle from Harman's Cross.

Passenger-carrying steam trains from Harman's Cross to Corfe Castle and Norden returned in August 1995.