Tilbury Riverside Station, Essex
Tilbury Riverside Station, Essex
We are working as structural engineers for the repair and refurbishment of the Grade II* listed former rail and cruise terminal at the Port of Tilbury. The reconfiguration will create a new café, event spaces and direct access to the Tilbury-Gravesend Ferry.
The first military fort at Tilbury was constructed in the sixteenth century and a link between the ferry and a railway was built in 1854 when the London, Tilbury and Southend Railway opened a station at Tilbury riverside. Tilbury Docks opened in 1886, with the town of Tilbury developing in the following decades. HMT Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury in 1948, carrying the first significant wave of migrants to Britain from the Caribbean, and the same year saw Tilbury Fort cease to be a military site. The latter twentieth century saw the decline of passenger traffic from Tilbury Docks, with the Riverside Station closing in 1992.
The proposals were initially developed by our Heritage advice for a proposed new landing stage pier at the eastern end of the existing Passenger Landing Stage and Cruise Terminal. We helped establish the key design principles and how the design would affect nearby designated assets of the Tilbury Fort (Scheduled Monument) and the World’s End Inn (Grade II).
In 2023, the Heritage Lottery Funding granted £3.4m for the 'Back on Track' project, which will transform Tilbury’s rail and cruise terminal complex into a new community and commercial facility that celebrates the site’s unique trade, military and migration history. Our structural engineers began working alongside PRS Architects on proposals to transform the former rail and cruise terminal complex into a new community and commercial facility that celebrates the site’s unique trade, military and migration history. The proposals include a full regeneration of the station building, creating eight studio lets for local artists; a new café; the opening up of the historic ticket hall for community events; the reinstatement of the entrance glazed canopy with new glazing, to replicate the original roof; internal alterations to secondary rooms within the former Station; external masonry repairs and window replacement with double glazed heritage metal framed windows; the reinstatement of two new openings in the Station’s rear elevation reflecting the positions of the historic platform openings; and new hard and soft-landscaping to external areas surrounding the station.
Altogether, the restoration of the Station holds the potential to revitalise the town’s future prospects, which have languished since the station’s closure.
Client: Tilbury on the Thames Trust
Architect: PRS Architects