Building record CLA 149 - Clare Railway Station

TL 772 452 Railway station on the Cambridge, Haverhill and Melford Branch Railway, opened in 1865 and closed in 1967. It is well preserved and a typical example of a small Stour
valley branch Railway Station

Clare Station and platform shelter were built for the Great Eastern Railway and opened on the 9th August 1865. The buildings represents one of the first attempts by a railway company to apply a rigid standardisation to all elements of a station. It is the only surviving example of the GER 1865 type to retain a full set of buildings, comprising the main station building with incorporated station master's house, platform shelter and goods shed (See Monument CLA 148).

The station master's house had two ground-floor rooms, a kitchen and parlour, on either side of an entrance hall from which a curving staircase led to a landing and three bedrooms. The booking hall was accessed via a door under the stairs.

Stations with two platforms, as at Clare, had a waiting shelter on the side opposite the main building. This had an open front, flanked by large screen windows with vertical timber match-boarding below, giving access to the general waiting area with a fireplace and fixed bench seating on both sides.

The station building has an H-shaped plan with the station master' house forming the east range, and the booking hall forming the central and west ranges. The outbuildings, located in the garden on the east side of the house, are attached via a brick wall to the north-east corner of the house. Opposite the station building on the south side is the platform waiting shelter with attached platform walls. Construction is of red brick laid in Flemish bond with gault brick dressings and slate-covered roofs.

Following the Beeching Report, the goods yard closed in 1966, and the station in 1967. The crane, railway tracks and signal pylons have been removed, the signal box was destroyed by fire in the late 1960s, and two buildings to the far east of the station master's house and that to the west of the waiting shelter have been demolished. The main building had been used as a Country Park Warden house and office until 2012.

Clare Station and platform shelter are Grade II Listed Buildings. For the designation record of this site please see The National Heritage List for England.