Vital repairs to a former railway station are now complete.
As part of the Beverley Road Townscape Heritage Scheme, funded by The National Lottery Heritage Fund and Hull City Council, a grant was awarded to Summit Education Society to support essential repair works and the restoration of traditional historic features at Stepney Station on Beverley Road Hull.
The works have included returning the Station House building to its traditional brown and buff paint colour scheme, giving local residents a taste of how the building would have looked back in the 1850s when it was operated by the North Eastern Railway company.
Councillor Paul Drake-Davis, Portfolio Holder for Regeneration, said: “Stepney Station is a key landmark on Beverley Road and an important part of Hull’s transport and social history.
“Thanks to the National Lottery Heritage Fund and National Lottery players, the building will continue to play a role for local people and the heritage of one of Hull’s most important historic gateways will be protected for the future.”
The full programme of works at Stepney Station, which has also included repairs to roofing, windows, chimneys and stonework, ensure that the building will be used as an educational and community hub by Summit Education Society for many years to come.
Zeki Tasdemir from Summit Education Society said: “Summit Education Society is proud to see the renovation works at Stepney Station have been successfully completed. The Beverley Road TH scheme and this funding represent a significant milestone in our journey to better serve our community. This is indeed an exciting time for us. We are incredibly grateful to the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Hull City Council for their support which has allowed us to transform our community centre into a more welcoming and safe place for everyone.”
For more than one hundred years Stepney Station connected Hull residents to East Yorkshire and the rest of the UK. The station closed in 1964 but fifty years later, a programme of restoration and repair works has been delivered to breathe new life into this important part of Hull’s heritage.
Stepney Station is one of the last surviving parts of Hull’s suburban railway network. At the height of its popularity in the early 1900s, trains arrived and departed every few minutes and Stepney issued more than 45,000 tickets per year.
To celebrate the completion of works, local residents across Hull have been sharing their own memories of the station, where trains once whisked passengers to the seaside at Withernsea and Hornsea. “My mother would walk down to Stepney Station with me walking holding on to the pram, my sister in the tansad and dog Tippy tied to the handles of the pram. We were catching the train to Hornsea to stay in our caravan”, Valerie told us. “As a 5-year-old in 1955 waiting on the station platform was always very exciting.” Others have shared stories of standing on the pedestrian footbridge at Stepney Station to watch the trains pass through.
Another local resident, Carol, shared her family connections to the railway: “We lived down Laurel Grove on Park Road which faced directly onto the railway and my father was a guard, on the steam trains initially, so the railway was part of our lives. Every Monday morning my mum would peg the washing out and at 10.55 we had to rush out to bring it all in before the 11 o’clock train covered everything in steam….Us kids would sometimes wait for a slow train to pass Park Road and run down Terry Street as fast as we could, and attempt to get to Stepney Station before the train. Not sure if we ever managed it!” Works at Stepney Station are the latest completed project in a wide-ranging programme of work in the Beverley Road Conservation Area, including grants for restoration work, public realm improvements, and an activity programme delivered with the local community. People are encouraged to find out more and share their own memories of Stepney Station here.
