KEEN gardener Peter Gibson has turned back the floral clock at what was one of the North East’s grandest railway stations.
Monkwearmouth Station in Sunderland was built in neo-Greek style in 1848 for railway magnate and local MP George Hudson.
Now part of Tyne Wear Archives and Museums, the Grade II-star listed building features a magnificent portico leading into a grand entrance hall and well- preserved booking office, both of which display original features such as the ticket booths, fireplaces and shuttered windows.
Today author, former MP for Sunderland South and chairman of the Heritage Lottery Fund in the North East Chris Mullin will open a new display in the transport museum grounds which includes a new wagon shed complete with a restored covered carriage truck built at Darlington in 1939 and a goods brake van built at Shildon by the North Eastern Railway in 1916.
To complement the new development, museum duty manager Peter decided to revive the tradition where staff at stations, no matter how small, took pride in tending railway gardens and floral displays.
Peter led a team of volunteers from environmental charity BTCV to create two cottage gardens at the front and side of the museum and a wildflower meadow in the grounds on a site which had become overgrown and a target for fly- tipping.
Peter lives a short walk from the museum, and has a cottage garden to the front of his home and vegetable plots at the rear. He says: “I am very interested in gardening and I wanted to contribute to a place where I love working by re-creating Victorian cottage gardens which also incorporate vegetables and herbs.
“The idea coincided with the construction of the wagon shed and the restoration of the carriage and brake van in the sidings area of the museum.
“I researched station gardens and found that in the Victorian period, it was common that the station masters of small stations proudly tended flower beds and some grew vegetables and herbs in small allotments on site. We decided to create cottage gardens at the front and side of the museum and to use the land at the far end of the site to create a wildflower meadow which would attract bees.”
As the gardens were developed, artefacts were found from the site’s railway station days, including a loading gauge which is now being restored.
Other railway items which were discovered, which include wooden sleepers with rail attachments, have now found a new use as ornaments in the gardens.
There are plans to transform an overgrown area in the south of the grounds, which according to a map of 1857 was the site of cattle pens, into a woodland area.
The newly-restored carriage truck holds a classic 1963 Rover P4 car, on loan from the National Motor Museum in Beaulieu, Hampshire.
The car is typical of those carried on British Railways Motorail services in wagons of this type during the late 1950s and 1960s.
Visitors are welcome from noon today for free balloons, stickers and badges to celebrate the new developments.
