A RELIC of Bridport’s transport and trading history is being smashed to bits.
The brick and slate building that used to be Travis Perkins’ office and hire centre is being demolished as part of the builders merchants’ £2.3 million redevelopment of their site in St Andrew’s Road.
“It’s sacrilege,” one woman said to me. “Didn’t it use to be the old railway station?”
I thought it was, but on checking, I see it wasn’t.
The old Bridport station opened in 1857 when trains began running to and from Bridport and Maiden Newton. It closed to passengers in 1975, and was then destroyed when the A3066 was improved.
The building that’s now being knocked down stood – from what I can work out – in a busy goods yard set up near to the railway station. Round about 1860, the yard was owned by one Albert Stardling. In 1884, it was taken over by the builders’ merchants Bradfords, who made a point of siting themselves close to railway lines so that bulky goods could be more easily transported. Bradfords used the building as a warehouse.
It’s not Listed for any particular architectural merit, and it stands in the way of Travis Perkins’ plans for a new depot, and Lidl’s plans for a new supermarket, which is why, as you can see, it’s being turned into rubble. The bricks, apparently, are going to be crushed into dust.
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