Thomas Brassey built a third of Britain’s railways, three quarters of France’s railway and one in 20 of all the railways in the world
A bronze statue of railway pioneer Thomas Brassey is set to be proudly displayed outside Chester Railway Station, following a successful fundraising campaign. The planning department of Cheshire West and Chester Council has given the green light for the statue of Brassey, who was responsible for building a third of Britain’s railways, three quarters of France’s railways and one in 20 of all the railways globally.
Born in Buerton near Chester in 1805, Brassey also built Chester Station and collaborated with renowned engineers of his era such as George and Robert Stephenson, Joseph Locke and Isambard Kingdom Brunel. The planning application was submitted by The Thomas Brassey Society, which raised funds for the statue.
The sculpture will be crafted by Andy Edwards, who also worked on The Beatles Statue in Liverpool. Planning documents reveal that the design will portray Brassey in his mid-40s, the age he was when he finished Chester Station in 1848, and will show him studying a map of the Shrewsbury-Chester Railway, which he also completed that year.
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The statue will be positioned on land at the front of the station on Station Road, cast in bronze at 1.2 x life size, standing next to a piece of contemporary railway track at life-size, also cast in bronze. It will be mounted on a short plinth faced in York sandstone to match the surface of the pedestrian footway it stands on.
A planning officer’s report recommending approval stated: “It is anticipated that the proposed statue would form an important part of the future redevelopment of Chest Brassey’s initial role was as manager of Storeton Quarry on the Wirral, but after being convinced by Thomas Telford to assist in surveying for the A5 London – Holyhead trunk road in North Wales, his first railway project was the construction of the Penkridge Viaduct on what is now the West Coast main line.He constructed Chester Station following Francis Thomson’s design and it opened its doors in August 1848, along with many of the railway lines still operational today – Shrewsbury-Chester, Chester-Crewe, Chester-Holyhead, and a section of Chester-Birkenhead. As a civil engineer, his projects also encompassed bridges, stations and viaducts.
He died in 1870 and is still regarded by some as an ‘unsung hero’ of Britain and the world’s engineering history. The report further stated: “Although there is a bust of Thomas Brassey in Chester Cathedral, commemoration plaques at Chester Station and two Chester streets named after him, there are no statues of him anywhere. He deserves to be better recognised as the world’s greatest railway builder.”
