Home

Miscellaneous

St Pancras Station is now the terminus for Eurostar, taking over from Waterloo International. The new railway to the Kent Coast  involved building 150 bridges and cost £5.8 billion, and took 11 years.

St Pancras Station itself was also a 'Wonder of its age some talk about it as 'The Cathedral of the Railways'. The station was built for the Midland Railway Company from 1854-1867.  It served the Midlands - Leicestershire, Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire. It was built to the design of William Henry Barlow, by the Butterley Company Limited, of Ripley Derbyshire. At the time it was a massive engineering achievement having the widest single-span arch structure in the world - being 247 feet - at the time.

Ampleforth's connection with St Pancras comes via the Butterley Company Limited, based in Ripley, Derbyshire, and the Wright family.

Butterley  was a company in the forefront of the Industrial Revolution. In 1802  the Company, founded in 1790 and  known then as Benjamin Outram & Co., changed its name to the Butterley Company following the purchase of an estate called Butterly, near Ripley in Derbyshire by Benjamin Outram, with finance from a local landowner called Beresford and a banker in Nottingham called John Wright.

Butterley became pioneers in the industrial revolution era and built canals, mined coal and smelted the iron ore mined from the extensive local deposits. Subsequently the iron produced became a means of further endeavour - engineering. The Company was taken over by the Wright family, originally Nottingham bankers, in the early 19th century and was floated on the stock exchange in 1910.  Although the mining side was nationalised in 1947 the engineering continued.

The Ampleforth connection comes via the apointment of Monty Wright (OA1907) as Chairman in 1956, following the untimely death of his Old Wykhamist cousin Walter.   Monty was a descendant of John Wright, one of the founder shareholders of the Company. Monty's brothers were all educated at Ampleforth and Denis also became a director.Younger brother Terence joined the Ampleforth Community in 1926, taking his Christian name name as his monastic name. Fr Terence - known as Tintax- was Housemaster of St Aidans and subsequently Procurator. He died in 1957 at the young age of 54.

Monty was succeeded as Chairman, on his retirement in 1966, by RWF (Bob) Wilberforce (OA1922) - a partner in the firm of solicitors in the City of London, Travers Smith Braithwaite- had been a director since 1959.

The company was finally taken over in 1968 by the Wiles Group - later known as the Hanson Trust - which ulimately became Hanson.

The magnificent Midland Hotel, built next to St Pancras, was designed by the architect Sir Gilbert Scott, the father of Sir Giles Gilbert Scott. Sir Giles Gilbert Scott,also the architect of Bolton House and the orignal part of the Abbey Church at Ampleforth.

MFMW  [posted 18 September 2007, corrected 11 November 2007]]