Britain's Second-Most Hideous Bus Station To Be Demolished

[Zaune]

BBC News

Northampton Greyfriars demolition: Mouth of Hell faces 'blow-down'


A bus station that has dominated the Northampton skyline for nearly 40 years is set to collapse in seconds after a series of "sharp bangs".

The Brutalist Greyfriars building will be subjected to a "blow-down". Town centre road closures and an exclusion zone have been in place from 06:00 GMT.

A total of 414 homes will also be temporarily evacuated for safety reasons when the building is destroyed.

Retail and leisure schemes are now being considered for the site.

The exact timing of the demolition has not been disclosed, but it is not a public event.


Billy Young, from DSM demolition, said the "series of sharp bangs" would follow the explosives being set off in a sequence of detonations.

The 175m (574ft) long, three-floor building, which includes a car park, will be flattened in about 10 seconds, he said.



The 1970s building was once described as "like a great big mouth of hell" by Channel 4 presenter and designer Kevin McCloud.

Catherine Croft, director of the 20th Century Society, said: "Nobody will ever say Greyfriars is the best example of a building of the Brutalist period, but in years to come we might think it wasn't that bad."

The group aims to safeguard the heritage of architecture and design in Britain from 1914 onwards.




David Mackintosh, leader of Northampton Borough Council, said the demolition, costing more than £4m, will "breathe new life into this under-used area of town".

Mr Young added: "The exclusion zone is designed to keep people at a very safe distance from the demolition... so they are not impacted upon by the noise or the dust.

"We do not invite anybody to come along as this is not a public event."

Full coverage of the Greyfriars demolition will be available on BBC Radio Northampton from 06:00 on Sunday

I'm sure it's going to be replaced with bland, unimaginatively-designed retail units and "community space" that will never be used except by the odd bunch of art students doing something pretentious, but somehow I'm not all that upset.

[salm]

Oh man, that building looks awesome.

[Zaune]

That is a matter for opinion to say the least. This is what it looked like on the inside:

Greyfriars Bus Station by Nicobobinus, on Flickr

[Eternal_Freedom]

Yeah that doesn't look that bad. Certainly it's better than some of the fuck-ugly shit we had in High Wycombe before they levelled parts of it.

[Enigma]

It is about as ugly as some of the federal government in Gatineau, Quebec and in Ottawa.

[Starglider]

That isn't a brutalist building. I'm not sure exactly what style it should be classified under, but it doesn't have the obsession with raw concrete and boxy massings that brutalism has. I think it looks fine and could be facelifted instead of demolished if it was still fit for purpose. I assume that's not that case though and a different use is now higher priority for that land.

[Zaune]

I think it's more that bringing it up to modern standards would have cost far more than knocking it down and starting over, assuming you could even knock some holes in the roof to let some natural light in without bringing the building down anyway.