A tour of Culham Station
Inside the Old Ticket Office
A warm welcome
During cold weather you will find a roaring fire in the Waiting Room. The grate is very old and has been 'modified' over time but it is still there doing its job. The floor was hidden by some old rotting hardboard until 2014 when it was taken up to reveal not only the original planks but also the original stone hearth.
Heating arrangements seem to have varied considerably since the station was first opened. Looking at old photographs there are signs of what look like stove flue pipes sticking out of the roof. It seems probable that there was a stove in the Parcels Office (later the Station Master's office), definitely one in the main office and possibly one in the Ladies' Cloakroom. The latter might have been to provide hot water. Any stoves have long gone and no traces remain inside to suggest where they once were.
A hidden fireplace
One puzzling feature was the fact that there have always been two chimneys, the tall one being for the Waiting Room, but what about the other? The answer was found when a hidden fireplace was discovered in the main office. It was only revealed when the old hardboard was lifted exposing the stone hearth. Close examination of the wall panelling shows where the fireplace was removed and wood panelling was inserted to cover the hole. When the ticket office was first opened it would have been open plan with counters as in a shop. The fireplace must have been closed up when the offices were first divided up by partitions as the door to the Parcels Office cuts across one side of the hearth. Marks on the wall and cut outs in the wall panelling in the Parcels Office do suggest that an alcove may have been formed around the fireplace to keep it within the main office at first. This would not have been very practical however and the marks etc. may be unrelated.
Ticket counter
This is the counter from which tickets would have been sold. On the top can be seen several rings and screw holes where the Edmondson ticket punches had been fixed, together with the mark where a fatal shot had ricocheted in 1868. Most of the drawer knobs were missing when Entikera moved in and so have been replaced by new ones of the same shape, but the door latches were an addition by a previous tenant. The single drawer under the counter is new as it too was missing. The counter tops, drawers and cupboards on either side of the main office are all original dating from 1844 when the station first opened.
Ticket window
In the early days the ticket office would have been open plan with no barrier between the staff and passengers, tickets being written by hand. Partitions were erected on top of the counters (you can see where they stick out underneath on the public side) and internal doors installed when printed tickets began to be used. These partitions were later extended to ceiling height. It looks as if at first the ticket window was open with a pointed arch at the top and a matching sliding window to cover it. The thick glass seems to be a later addition with the pointed arch being filled in with a wood panel. The sliding window remains in situ and still works. Two working Edmondson ticket date punches from the collection once again stand on the counter next to the window. Alongside these is a small ticket rack containing souvenir tickets, two ticket clippers, and several other stamps and punches as would have been found in an old ticket office.
Counter 'mod' and Parcels counter
The door between the main office and the Waiting Room is very narrow with an unusual metal door frame. The end of the ticket counter has been cut away to provide clearance for the door to open. As can be seen, the work is somewhat rough and ready showing that poor workmanship is nothing new. A small shelf is attached to the door and what appears to have once been a small hatch. What purpose this may have served is uncertain as there is the main ticket window a few feet away.
The other view shows the second counter which would have served the Parcels Office. A hatch can be seen in the middle presumably through which parcels were received. This hatch has long since been gummed up with paint and there is no prospect of making it work again. This counter is shorter than the ticket counter and so the door into the Parcels Office is a lot wider showing that when the partitions were installed they were simply built round the existing features.
Click or tap to see a larger image
The double cupboard doors under the parcels counter are simply made from planks unlike the other cupboard doors, and were an obvious later addition. The open space which first existed under the parcels counter would have echoed that under the ticket counter, and the wood plinth beneath the doors shows similar signs of wear. This space was converted into a cupboard by the addition of the doors and a shelf. The shelf was very obviously made from four planks of recycled wood as still attached underneath are the remnants of several old posters which appear to originate from the Swindon area. Not enough of the posters remain to see what exactly was being advertised, but one looks to be advertising a display of stereoscopic views from Swindon and the Downs, one is advertising some sort of competition with entry fees of 1s and 2s, and two others are sale posters for freehold land or property near Swindon. A clue as to the age of the wood comes on one of the sale posters which carries the date of (March?) 1880. Click or tap on the thumbnail to see a larger image of the underside of the shelf.
Main office bay window
The bay window in the main office affords a wonderful view up and down the platform. The curve of the line is very apparent when viewed from here and trains pass by only a few feet away. The narrowness of the platform at this point is one of the reasons cited for closing the platform as it is certainly outside modern safety rules.
The window bears evidence of changes over time, most notable perhaps being the security bars. These substantial bars have been installed on all the windows in the building, including those on the doors, and are bolted through the window frame itself. No photograph has been found which shows the office without these bars and it is felt that they were added in the very early part of its life. Other additions include the heavy wooden window shelf, which again is very old but not original, and what looks like some wooden box trunking down one side and across the bottom of the window. Nothing remains that could give a clue as to its intended use.
Remnants of original paint
By and large it looks as if the inside paintwork of the ticket office has never been stripped back when redecorating took place, with many coats of paint building up on each other over time. Sadly this means that some woodwork detail has been lost and the thick layers of paint are prone to cracking and flaking. In certain places the thick layers of paint are all that exist as the woodwork behind has rotted away. There is an upside however as protected beneath the layers is thought to be the original finish.
June 2019 saw a visit by Paul Croft from Lincoln Conservation which is part of the University of Lincoln. They had been commissioned by Network Rail to investigate the paint as, after much lobbying, Network Rail were finally considering some much needed external maintenance. He commented on the use of incorrect materials in earlier renovation work, and was very interested in how the layers of paint showed several different colour schemes, with green being the oldest, and the wood panelling appearing to have been initially stained or varnished. Samples were taken from various places, both inside (for his own interest) and out. These photos show the various layers of paint on the wall inside and on the outside door jamb. Black and white photographs from various sources appear to show window and door frames, and the doors themselves, were painted white in the 1970s. It is known from an article by a GWR employee that the station was once painted green - as noted later in 'fake bricks'. The first photograph also shows the original lime plaster below the green paint layer.
Lincoln University kindly forwarded a paint analysis reportClick or tap to view the report on the inside samples for our interest, and it is reproduced here in pdf form with their kind permission.
