Railway Station Denmark Road

The Railway Station’s Parcel Office car park, which is situated to the immediate south of the building. The curving section of rail in the foreground is a vestige of the line which once ran from the Station to service the Fish Market, helping catches to be transported to destinations in different parts of the country and also for the waste created by filleting to be sent on for processing into fertiliser. Conveyance of this “by-product", each late afternoon, led to the term “gut truck” sometimes being used of the wagon involved - but this was largely in error, because trawl fish were gutted on board ship before being iced down in the hold prior to each vessel’s return to port. It was Samuel Morton Peto, who brought the railway to Lowestoft (from Norwich) in 1847 and later built a connection to Ipswich in 1859 - the former line linking the town to the Midlands and North of England and the latter to London. Without any available statistics to prove things one way or the other, it may well have been the case that the transportation of goods (including fish) in and out of the town was a lot more more important in the early days than carrying passengers. Peto’s combined railway and harbour works, during the 1850s, had a profound and lasting effect on the physical and economic expansion of Lowestoft - perhaps best seen in Census Return population figures: 4,238 (1841), 6,781 (1851), 13,623 (1871), 19,150 (1891) and 37,886 (1911). There is no opportunity here to discuss further Peto’s role in the creation of “modern Lowestoft”, but a few comments are perhaps permissible on the length of screen wall, seen here, separating sidings from the main lines. Its fabric shows the use of blind arcading as a decorative feature, damaged to a degree (by some means) on the nearer section of its face and with the whole structure visually degraded to a certain extent by the brickwork absorbing 170 years of atmospheric pollutants. Clean it all up and we would be looking at creamy “Somerleyton whites”, from the Lucas Brothers yard located in that same parish. This building company was strongly associated with Peto throughout the whole of his activities, near and far, and was in some ways as much a part of Lowestoft’s success as the “main man” himself. With the Parcel Office intended to become an integral part of Town Centre revitalisation, refreshing the Station brickwork may perhaps be done, at some point. Here’s hoping! How many other places of Lowestoft’s size (or larger) can boast of a railway station in a more central and convenient location? And isn’t it time that the bus station was moved onto the same site, on some of the land which is available? An integrated transport-hub really would be a positive step forward for the town.