Curzon Street Station

There are a whole host of abandoned industrial buildings in Birmingham but the Curzon Street Station could be the oldest, as it is already the oldest surviving monumental railroad terminus in the world.

Opened in 1838, the “Birmingham Curzon Street” station, as it was known, a neoclassical building on Curzon Street, was meant to impress users of the new railway. And it did. Unfortunately, the location in the east of the city didn’t, and the station was only used by scheduled passenger trains between 1838 and 1854. It continued as a goods station for a time, but it was eventually closed completely in 1966. After it was closed, the platforms were destroyed, leaving only the lonely, if lovely building remaining. 

Since it was closed, the historic space has housed a number of projects, including being used as a performance space for an experimental theatre group, and more prosaically as a Parcel Force depot. While its past may have left is little more than a sparsely used relic, the future of the building may lie, once again in public transit, thanks to a plan to build a new high-speed train station nearby, which may even incorporate the old building itself.  

Until that grand plan comes to fruition, the lone building is surrounded by a car park, and is home to little more than some impressive graffiti and even more impressive weeds.

Update as of September 2021: Work is now well underway redeveloping the site as part of the UK Government’s new HS2 railway.