Workstream 2: Conservation management plan and reuse options - Complete

Statement of Significance

The Railway Building is of moderate to medium significance in its own right and of medium to high significance on account of its role in the Cambrian Railways headquarters complex at Oswestry and its context within the Cambrian Railways line as a whole. This line and the infrastructure and buildings surviving across the line’s former route are collectively of medium to high significance as a secondary mainline railway system originating in the second ‘mania’ of railway construction that occurred in the 1840s-60s, and which played a major role in the industrialisation of Wales and the border region.

With the Cambrian Loco Works (Grade II), the goods shed (Grade II) and other infrastructure, the building itself is believed to form Britain’s best, and potentially only, surviving example of a regional or secondary railway headquarters, and the only known example where both the headquarters and the engineering works survive. The Railway Building and Cambrian Loco Works are believed to be some of the best surviving
examples of buildings of their kind, whilst the triple tracks running through and beyond the group (two reinstated) are similarly the only known example to survive anywhere in Britain.

Externally, this is something of a landmark building at local level, visible from Oswald Road and from Wilfred
Owen Green, where views also include the Cambrian Loco Works. Its ornate, if simplified, Victorian Italianate exterior, quality materials, tall height and distinctive roofscape, unusual footprint, prominence to Oswald Road, and recognisable railway character all articulate the intrinsic status of its role as railway headquarter whilst conveying aesthetic value.

This is lower internally, due to the loss of historic character, but is still retained in certain individual spaces, the sense of spaciousness to the inherited plan form and the overall character that is conveyed by the historic joinery and plasterwork and the more sympathetic replacements.

Conservation Management Plan

The CMP brings together all known information of the building on one package and is essential for guiding conservation work and any grant applications.

Feasibility – end use options

Site improvement strategies