Most of us walk Station Road for the shops, the bus stop, the shortcut to the park. The terraces on the north side barely register: a long run of brick fronts, a scatter of chimney pots, a corner shop that has clearly been something else in a previous life. Look again. Those houses were built for the people who worked the line, and once you know what you are looking at, a short walk becomes a lesson in how the Quarter grew up around its railway.
The route below is about a mile, almost entirely flat, and takes forty minutes at a gentle pace. Do it on a dry morning when the sun is low and the brickwork shows its colour. Everything is on public pavement or public footpath, and the cottages are lived in — so the walk stays on the street side of the garden walls.
The Route at a Glance
- Station Approach — start at the old forecourt, where the goods yard gates still hang on their hinges.
- Company Row — the long terrace opposite, the best single stretch of railway housing in the Quarter.
- The foreman's house — the gabled end house, noticeably grander than its neighbours.
- The old institute — reading room and social club, now converted.
- The allotments — ground the railway company once leased to its own staff.
- The footbridge — finish here for the long view back over the rooftops.
Stop One: Station Approach and the Yard Wall
Begin where the taxis wait. Under the tarmac of the forecourt you can still find stretches of granite setts, and the kerb line is cut from the same stone. The wide entrance was built for horses and carts, which is why it feels generous in a way later streets never do.
Walk along the boundary wall to the right. It is brick, with a half-round coping weathered to a soft grey. Halfway along, a blocked doorway marks the old weighbridge office, where wagons were weighed and loads recorded. Men who worked the yard were expected to be within a few minutes' walk of it, day or night, and that single fact explains why the cottages opposite were built where they were.
Stop Two: Company Row, and How to Read a Terrace
Cross carefully and stand back on the opposite pavement. This is the terrace the railway company put up for its own workers, in the great wave of company house-building that ran from the 1850s to the 1890s. The pattern is classic: two rooms up, two down, one room deep, a yard behind, and a front garden no wider than a doormat.
What marks these out as railway housing rather than speculative housing is uniformity. A private builder varied heights and details to suit the market. A company bought in bulk and built to one specification, and it shows.
Details worth stopping for
- Brickwork — warm red brick with occasional darker headers, and a dentil course under the eaves on the best houses.
- Windows — original openings were usually sashes; look for stone or rubbed-brick lintels above. Some openings were blind or bricked up later.
- Doorways — recessed, with a shallow arched head and a fanlight. A few boot scrapers survive beside the step.
- Roofs — Welsh slate, with terracotta ridge tiles replaced piecemeal over the decades. Chimneys are shared, which is why repairs need neighbourly agreement.
- Ironwork — cast-iron gutters, downpipes and the occasional surviving railing, painted far more often than replaced.
- Later additions — back extensions, filled-in coal holes, cellar vents, satellite dishes. None of it is a mistake; it is the ordinary life of a 150-year-old street.
Stop Three: The Foreman's House and the Date Stones
At the far end of the row, the terrace finishes with a house that is taller, wider and gabled. This was the foreman's or the stationmaster's, and the difference in rank is written into the building: a bay window, a proper porch, a slightly larger plot. Status was visible in Victorian working life, and housing was one of the ways it was expressed.
Look for date stones as you go — on an end wall, above a door, or set into a gable. Where they survive, they usually record the year the terrace was finished rather than begun, and they are the most reliable clue you will find. Where they do not, the brickwork, the window pattern and the depth of the plan tell you roughly where you are in the nineteenth century.
Stop Four: The Institute, and the Allotments Beyond
Turn the corner and you reach a plain brick building with tall windows and a stone lintel over the door. Institutes and reading rooms were common in the later nineteenth century — part library, part social club, part evening class. This one has been converted, but the shape of the main hall is still legible from the street.
Beyond it, the path runs alongside the allotments. Railway companies often leased land like this to their staff, and the plots are still worked today. From spring onwards the fences are thick with beans and the whole strip smells of damp earth. It is the quietest part of the walk, and the best place to notice how much of the Quarter's green space began as a perk of employment.
Photographing the Quarter
The terrace faces roughly east, so early morning gives you raking light across the brick and long shadows between the chimney stacks; mid-afternoon flattens everything. Get low and shoot along the row rather than square on — repetition is the story here, and the rhythm of doors, windows and chimneys is what makes railway housing recognisable. A phone is fine. Keep out of the road, don't prop a tripod across a driveway, and if someone is in their front garden, say hello and ask first.
Practical Notes Before You Go
The full loop is about a mile on pavement and level footpath, with one shallow crossing and a short slope up to the footbridge. It is manageable with a pushchair, though the pavement on Company Row is narrow enough that two buggies will not pass. Wear flat shoes.
There is a café at the start and a pub at the finish; the stretch between has nothing, so take water in summer. Allow an hour if you photograph as you go. Dogs are welcome on a lead, bins are scarce, and the footbridge steps are steep when wet.
And a last word on manners. This is a residential street, not a heritage site. Keep your voice down in the early morning, don't photograph through windows, and leave the drone at home — the Quarter is a no-fly area for good reason.
Photo: Michał Robak / Pexels
