Restoration Of The Decade

COUNTRY LIFE has asked a group of leading commentators and professionals to name their favourite restoration project– undertaken by somebody else–over the past decade. They reveal a rich, impressive and varied field of recent work

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St Pancras Station, London NW1

GEORGE GILBERT SCOTT’S Midland Hotel and Barlow’s train shed created the finest railway terminal in England. The hotel was closed in 1935, narrowly avoided demolition in the 1960s, occupied by British Rail until 1985, and then abandoned. Neglect can sometimes be benign, however, as the station thereby avoided late-20th-century modernisation. Its superb restoration, combined with the sympathetic re-use of the train shed, provided a two-storey shopping mall, platforms for Eurostar and a new Tube station. The result is a glorious fusion of new and old: the best of all worlds. Giles Quarme, Giles Quarme & Associates

Oldham Town Hall, Greater Manchester

OLDHAM, the ultimate 19th-century cotton-spinning town, has had a tough time over the past 60 years, despite its many assets. One of these is the noble Classical Town Hall, with a series of great interiors that includes a superb faience Egyptian Room. It was shuttered for decades and increasingly derelict, until the council took the brave decision to invest public money in a scheme to convert it as a cinema, saving a great historic building and bringing activity and life back to the heart of Oldham. Here, the very fact of the restoration is something worth celebrating. If our fractured country is to heal, we need much more of this. Christopher Costello, director, Victorian Society

Welsh Streets, Liverpool