Paddington Station Through Time

Paddington is part of a hub of underground stations and is home to the world’s most famous bear, named after the station. Revel in the selection of images of Paddington Through Time and see how Brunel’s masterpiece has stood the test of time. ‘I am going to design, in a great hurry, and I believe to build, a station after my own fancy,’ stated Isambard Kingdom Brunel in 1851. That station, the second to bear the name ‘Paddington’, was to be another Brunel masterpiece. His delight at the prospect of building a replacement and permanent station at Paddington is self-evident. The new station was to be built on the plot of land just south of the Bishop’s Road Bridge, defined by Eastbourne Terrace and Praed Street on two sides, and by London Street and the canal on the northeast side. Because the new station would be located almost entirely within a cutting, there would be no grand exterior, and instead, Brunel impressed with his immense roof of iron and glass. Paddington is currently in the middle of a huge redevelopment that has seen it retain much of its nineteenth-century design, but updated to suit traffic flows of today. Millions pass through the station weekly, both to the West and Wales and to Heathrow on the Heathrow Express.