Qualla: Charing Cross railway station

Charing Cross railway station: Introduction

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kevin Prince, CC BY-SA 2.0. By 1913 you could leave Charing Cross at breakfast and reach Paris by tea. The boat-train service that connected this West End terminus to Dover, and Dover to Calais, made the journey in six and a half hours - extraordinary by Edwardian standards. Percy Fitzgerald called Charing Cross "the Gates of the World." Thomas Cook ran a travel office on the corner of the forecourt. Diplomatic dispatches passed through here; royal visits departed from these platforms; the wounded came home through these platforms during the First World War. And distances in London - all of them, measured to this day - count from a spot just outside the front door, where an equestrian statue of Charles I marks the original site of the medieval Eleanor Cross.

Image: Kevin Prince | CC BY-SA 2.0

Charing Cross railway station: Building a Terminus Over a Market

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Geoffrey Skelsey, CC BY-SA 4.0. The South Eastern Railway had wanted a West End terminus for years. The company secretary Samuel Smiles - yes, the same Samuel Smiles who would later write Self-Help, the Victorian bestseller about industrious self-improvement - chose the site of the old Hungerford Market on the ...

Image: Geoffrey Skelsey | CC BY-SA 4.0

Charing Cross railway station: The Gates of the World

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Arild Vågen, CC BY-SA 3.0. Once open, Charing Cross became London's main terminus for continental boat-trains. The Sevenoaks diversion in 1868 made it the shortest route from London to Dover. Edward VII's intermittent rendezvous with continental Europe departed from these platforms; so did the Orient Expre...

Image: Arild Vågen | CC BY-SA 3.0

Charing Cross railway station: The Roof That Fell

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hugh Llewelyn, CC BY-SA 2.0. On the afternoon of 5 December 1905, a 70-foot section of Hawkshaw's great wrought-iron roof collapsed. The first warning came at about 3:45 p.m., when a main tie rod broke with a loud noise and people noticed it hanging down. The roof began to sag; the western wall cracked. For ...

Image: Hugh Llewelyn | CC BY-SA 2.0

Charing Cross railway station: The Trunk in the Cloakroom

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Astronautilus, CC BY 2.0. In May 1927, an unaccompanied trunk was deposited in the Charing Cross station cloakroom. Inside, when staff eventually checked, were the five severed body parts of a woman. She was identified as Minnie Alice Bonati, who had been murdered in Rochester Row by John Robinson, a furn...

Image: Astronautilus | CC BY 2.0

Charing Cross railway station: Embankment Place and the Cross That Remains

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Peter Broster, CC BY 2.0. By the late 1980s the post-collapse roof was tired. Architect Terry Farrell and his partners began the redevelopment in 1986 - a postmodern office and shopping complex called Embankment Place that effectively built over the platforms while keeping them operational. The 1906 roof ...

Image: Peter Broster | CC BY 2.0