Listing Text: BEARSTED 144/0/10014 WARE STREET 05-JAN-11 BEARSTED RAILWAY STATION GV II Railway station. Opened on July 1884, designed by Arthur Stride for the Maidstone and Ashford Railway in their distinctive Gothic house style. MATERIALS: polychrome brickwork. Yellow brick in Flemish bond with red brick dressings. Welsh slate roof with four tall brick chimneystacks. Wooden pointed arched sash windows with vertical glazing bars and rubbed brick voussoirs. Wooden fretted canopies. PLAN: two-storey stationmaster's house to the east, single-storey ticket office to the centre, single-storey waiting room to the west and attached shed to the extreme west. There is a detached single-storey waiting room to the north of the main station building on the other platform. EXTERIOR: the south or entrance front of the main building has a four-bay stationmaster's house to the east with one-arched doorcase and a four-panelled door in a single-storey section at the east end; the left two bays project. The single-storey ticket office has a fretted wooden canopy supported on cast-iron brackets with mouchette and quatrefoil cutout designs to the spandrels. Behind are two windows and a central pointed arched doorway with double diagonally boarded door with cross braces. The waiting room is of two bays with a large gable with moulded cornice and two windows. The attached end block has a smaller gable and arched doorcase. The north side is similar, but has a deeper fretted canopy supported on four elaborate cast-iron columns with decorated spandrels. The platform shelter is also constructed of yellow brick with red brick dressings. It has a flat, fretted wooden canopy supported on two cast-iron brackets and two cast-iron columns of the company house type. It retains the original wooden built-in bench. INTERIOR: the ticket office retains the original kingpost roof with exposed thin rafters and diagonal boarding and a wooden fireplace surround. The stationmaster's house retains the original staircase with stick balusters and chamfered newelpost with ball finial, a black marble fireplace with pilasters on the ground floor and three of the four bedrooms retain wooden fireplaces with cast-iron round-headed firegrates and built-in wooden cupboards. The door architraves are original and a four-panelled door survives. HISTORY: Bearsted Railway Station was opened on 1 July 1884 and was built for the Maidstone and Ashford Railway, which was constructed between 1880 and 1884 to give a direct connection between these two towns. It was designed by Arthur Stride. At the same time a goods shed, weighbridge house, weighbridge and cattle dock were constructed to the west of the station building. The Maidstone and Ashford Railway was purchased by the London, Chatham and Dover Railway when it was completed and became part of the South Eastern and Chatham Railway in 1899. In 1907 the station was renamed Bearsted and Thurnham station before reverting back to Bearsted in 1980. The goods yard was shut in 1964. SOURCES: C F Dendy Marshall, The History of the Southern Railway. Revised edition ed. Ian Allan, 453 Andrew Knight, The railways of South East England (1986), 47 A Awdry, Encyclopaedia of British Railway Companies (1990) REASONS FOR DESIGNATION: Bearsted Railway Station, designed by Arthur Stride for the Maidstone and Ashford Railway and opened in 1884, is designated at Grade II for the following principal reasons: * Intactness: it is a little altered example of a country station on the Maidstone to Ashford Railway in its destinctive Gothic house style. * Group value: it is the only station on this line which also retains the original goods shed, weigh house and weighbridge and cattle dock.