Becontree
Listing Details
Grade: Locally Listed
Date Listed: 04/2009
Local Authority: London Borough of Barking & Dagenham
Becontree, London Borough of Barking & Dagenham
Description
The London Borough of Barking & Dagenham have designated this station (on Gale Street, Dagenham) a locally listed building (Locally Listed Building No. 125 – designated April 2009). Becontree was built and opened by the London Midland & Scottish Railway in 1932 as part of the electrification of the line to Upminster and its widening from two to four tracks. This allowed the extension of the District line from Barking through to Upminster in the same year. Becontree replaced the nearby Gale Halt which had been opened in 1926. The mainline platforms served by LMS and then British Railways suburban services were closed in 1960 but their remains can still be seen.
A standard design for all new stations on this extension was constructed. This comprises a single storey red-brick station building with a simple stepped brick-on-edge parapet surmounted by an Underground roundel on a tall flagpole, and a projecting cantilevered canopy on the frontage.
Becontree Station, 1956
The station has remained little changed in the last 80 years as the archive photo of 1956 and a recent view shows – the changes limited to the removal of the 1940s British Railways totem from below the roundel on the flagpole and the filling in of the windows.
Becontree Station, 1932
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The platforms are reached from the ticket hall by way of the passenger overbridge and covered staircases.
The platforms are protected by very long canopies of a streamlined 1930s design, unadorned by any decorative features such as the valance which have characterised Victorian and Edwardian stations. They are supported on simple I-section girder columns, again very different from their much more decorative Edwardian columns with capitals and embellished brackets.
Ranges of well-detailed brickwork structures providing waiting rooms, lavatories and staff accommodation, partly top-lit by hipped glazed rooflights.
Becontree Station Platform, 1932
The unchanging scene can be seen in the two archive photographs of 1932, soon after the station was reconstructed, and the recent view.
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