History
The station was the first to be constructed inside the City of London; the original was designed by William Tite and was opened on 20 July 1841 for the London and Blackwall Railway (L&BR), replacing a nearby terminus at Minories that had opened in July 1840.
The station was rebuilt in 1854, following a design by George Berkley, adding a vaulted roof and the main facade. The station became the London terminus of the London, Tilbury and Southend Railway (LT&SR) in 1858; additionally, from 1850 until the opening of Broad Street station in 1865 it was also the City terminus of the North London Railway. The Great Eastern Railway (GER) used the station as an alternative to an increasingly overcrowded Liverpool Street station for the last part of the 19th and first half of the 20th century over the routes of the former Eastern Counties Railway. The L&BR effectively closed in 1926 after the cessation of passenger services east of Stepney. When the former Eastern Counties lines transferred to the Central line in 1948 the LT&SR became the sole user of the station.
Fenchurch Street station was the location of the first railway bookstall in the City of London, operated by William Marshall.
Read more about this topic: Fenchurch Street Railway Station
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“We are told that men protect us; that they are generous, even chivalric in their protection. Gentlemen, if your protectors were women, and they took all your property and your children, and paid you half as much for your work, though as well or better done than your own, would you think much of the chivalry which permitted you to sit in street-cars and picked up your pocket- handkerchief?”
—Mary B. Clay, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 3, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“We may pretend that we’re basically moral people who make mistakes, but the whole of history proves otherwise.”
—Terry Hands (b. 1941)