History
The station was opened in May 1857 by the Midland Railway on a line linking the Midland to the Great Northern Railway at Hitchin. (Later the Midland gained its own London terminus at St Pancras railway station.)
It was designed by C.H. Driver, with particularly fine "pierced grill" cast ironwork on the platforms. Although it was altered between 1879 and 1884 when the line was quadrupled, and again in 1896, it is regarded as one of best remaining examples of Midland architecture.
At the time, the leather trade being in recession, over half of its population was on poor relief. The railway enabled the town to sell its products over a much wider area and restored it to prosperity.
In the 1970s the glass canopies became a maintenance headache for British Rail, who proposed to remove the tops of the cast iron columns and replace the glass canopies with plastic sheeting. Kettering Civic Society objected to the plans and the canopies and columns were reprieved, later to be sympathetically restored by Railtrack in 2000.
Read more about this topic: Kettering Railway Station
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