Salhouse Station

Historic Norfolk

13 December 2021

Legal action by SAVE Britain’s Heritage has secured a reprieve for one of the smallest and most delightful country stations on the railway network. This is Salhouse, north of Norwich on the line up to the fashionable seaside resorts of Cromer and Sheringham. 

In October 2021, train operating company Abellio Greater Anglia had been given the go-ahead by Broadland Council to demolish the station under permitted development rights. Under Anglia’s plans, the waiting room and dogtooth canopy on the Norwich-bound platform were to have been replaced by a prefabricated glazed bus shelter, robbing the line of one its most picturesque stations.

However, working with Richard Harwood QC and Susan Ring of Harrison Grant Solicitors, SAVE Britain’s Heritage swiftly challenged the permission, and the decision has now been officially quashed.

SAVE has submitted an application for the urgent listing of Salhouse Station as a building of special architectural and historic interest.  Norfolk Historic Buildings Trust has written in support of SAVE’s listing application, the outcome of which is awaited.

Art historians are studying the station to decide if it is the work of the much-admired Norwich architect Thomas Jeckyll. In his later years Jeckyll excelled in the design of metalwork (strongly influenced by Japanese design) which was produced in impressive quantities by the firm of Barnard Bishop and Barnards.  Jekyll however died in 1881 several years before the station was built and it is considered more likely that the little station was designed by leading railway engineer William Neville Ashbee, who designed the impressive terminus station in Norwich. 

NHBT is now working with SAVE on a proposal for the repair and reuse of the station.