Intercity Place is a 11 storey building at

Plymouth railway station Plymouth railway station serves the city of Plymouth, Devon, England. It is on the northern edge of the city centre, close to the North Cross roundabout. It Is the second busiest station in the county of Devon, and is the largest of the six su ...

, the main rail station in

Plymouth Plymouth () is a port city and unitary authority in South West England. It is located on the south coast of Devon, approximately south-west of Exeter and south-west of London. It is bordered by Cornwall to the west and south-west. Plymouth ...

Devon Devon ( , historically known as Devonshire , ) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South West England. The most populous settlement in Devon is the city of Plymouth, followed by Devon's county town, the city of Exeter. Devon is ...

. The building was previously called Intercity House and was used as an office building. Intercity Place has 11 stories and is 47.2 m high and is one of the tallest buildings in Plymouth (2018).

History

Intercity House was built when work to rebuild the railway station was started by the

Great Western Railway The Great Western Railway (GWR) was a British railway company that linked London with the southwest, west and West Midlands of England and most of Wales. It was founded in 1833, received its enabling Act of Parliament on 31 August 1835 and ran ...

in the 1930s but was delayed due to

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. Work was restarted by

British Railways British Railways (BR), which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was a state-owned company that operated most of the overground rail transport in Great Britain from 1948 to 1997. It was formed from the nationalisation of the Big Four British rai ...

in 1956 to the designs of architects

Howard Cavanagh Howard Earnest Bernard Cavanagh FRIBA (17 August 1910 – 3 August 1960) was an English architect. Career H.E.B. Cavanagh was born in India, the eldest son of Bernard Cavanagh (b. 1877) and Annie. He arrived in London on the P&O ship Mongolia f ...

and Ian Campbell as part of the post war reconstruction detailed in "A Plan for Plymouth" put forward by

Sir Patrick Abercrombie Sir Leslie Patrick Abercrombie (; 6 June 1879 – 23 March 1957) was an English regional and town planner. Abercrombie was an academic during most of his career, and prepared one city plan and several regional studies prior to the Second World ...

at the request of Plymouth City Councillors. The modernised station, including the tower block of offices, was opened in 1962 by

Dr Beeching Richard Beeching, Baron Beeching (21 April 1913 – 23 March 1985), commonly known as Dr Beeching, was a physicist and engineer who for a short but very notable time was chairman of British Railways. He became a household name in Britain in the ...

, The building was scheduled for a major update in 2014 as part of a ten-year plan to improve the facilities at the station

Proposed demolition

The Heart of South West Local Transport Board published proposals to redevelop Plymouth railway station in 2017. The aim was to provide an improved 'gateway to the city' and would have included the creation of a public square in front of the station. This would have included the demolition of Intercity House. This demolition never went ahead, and it was instead planned to be converted into a building for the

University of Plymouth The University of Plymouth is a public research university based predominantly in Plymouth, England, where the main campus is located, but the university has campuses and affiliated colleges across South West England. With students, it is the ...

Conversion to University Building

In 2019 the

unveiled plans to renovate the building and convert it into a new teaching building, renaming it to Intercity Place in the process. The converted building will have 11 floors and an illuminated "halo" light beacon on top. InterCity Place is an integral part of a 10-year masterplan that will revitalise the University of Plymouth campus and its surrounding area. The repurposed building will provide a brand-new space to train and develop the next generation of nurses, midwives and allied health professionals from the School of Health Professions and School of Nursing and Midwifery. Providing a wide range of teaching areas, study places, cafes, and social learning spaces, the building will provide students with Inter-professional clinical skills facilities where students will experience working alongside other healthcare practitioners just as they will in their future careers.

Network Rail Network Rail Limited is the owner (via its subsidiary Network Rail Infrastructure Limited, which was known as Railtrack plc before 2002) and infrastructure manager of most of the railway network in Great Britain. Network Rail is an "arm's leng ...

will retain ownership of the building and lease it to the University for 150 years. The conversion is being worked on by construction contractor

Kier Group Kier Group plc is a British construction, services and property group active in building and civil engineering, support services, and the Private Finance Initiative. Founded in 1928 in Stoke-on-Trent it initially specialised in concrete enginee ...

and is scheduled to open in 2023. During the construction works a fire broke out in the building resulting in the railway station being evacuated, nobody was hurt in the incident.

References

External links

Plymouth.gov.ukEmporis.comSkyscraperpage.comWebsite
Buildings and structures in Plymouth, Devon Office buildings completed in 1962 {{University of Plymouth University of Plymouth

History

Proposed demolition

Conversion to University Building

See also

References

External links