Since starting this project we’ve been obsessed with finding original plans and drawings of Nottingham Victoria Station to help the project, searching and contacting countless archives over the past 2 years – only to get the same answers time and time again, ranging from ‘they don’t exist’ to ‘they were probably destroyed’. Getting this answer so much we started to tell people the same, when asked about plans of Victoria Station.
Fast forward to May this year, myself and Ash arranged to meet in person for the first time since agreeing to work on this project together, Ash had managed to get us a behind the scenes tour of what remains of Victoria Station at Intu Victoria Centre.
Whilst on the tour we came across some old plans of Victoria Centre, which lead one of us to bring up the subject of the lack of plans for Victoria Station, to which Mark (our amazing Intu tour guide) chirped ‘Oh I know where there are some’. Our eye’s lit up, but we darn’t get too excited, as we’d been promised plans before, only to find they were ones we’d already seen.
As the tour concluded, we asked again about the plans, which prompted Mark to call his friend who apparently had them…no answer, the suspense was killing us. We said bye to Mark, and in a daze, walked out of Victoria Centre, (bare in mind Ash and I had only just met for the first time face to face, and now someone was promising us unseen plans of Nottingham Victoria Station! Plans that’d greatly help our project, lots of plans!).
Late Saturday afternoon I was at my girlfriends parents when Mark started sending over photos of the plans he’d picked up from his friend, when I started to look at them I nearly choked on my food, when I’m at the ‘in laws’ I tend to keep phone check-age down to a minimum, you know, to be polite but I couldn’t stop looking at them, I went all weird…but my girlfriend understood as soon as I told her what was going on, she knows how obsessed I’d become with any sniff of a plan of the station.
We arranged to meet Mark early the following Monday (bank holiday Monday in fact), I met Ash and we walked nervously towards the entrance to Victoria Centre, we soon found Mark, and as cool and cucumber he escorted us to the information desk to present us a check list to sign which included numbers and descriptions of over 50 plans.
After signing the check list, we continued to the car park, at which point things started to feel like some kind of seedy drug deal. Once at Mark’s car he handed Ash a massive granny bag full to the brim of rolled up plans.
Mark escorted us back to the lift, letting the lift doors dramatically close as he said bye. We stood there in shock and aware at the amount of plans we’d just been handed, so much so that we actually forgot to press the button to make the lift do something, standing there for a good minute or two like geeky lemons.
After a trip to Ruddington Fields to meet some new contacts there, we drove Ash back to his home with the plans (we couldn’t let him get the train with such rare items!). Since then we’ve started to use them to the benefit of our project, Ash has corrected his platform building and started to create the cutting and retaining walls.
We’ve also started to digitise the plans by getting them professionally scanned, once complete we will start to make them available to view and download. These plans need to be shared, preserved and made easy to find.
Thanks again to Mark, his friend with the plans and Intu for letting us have a look around what remains.