In trying to find the displays of the proposed redevelopment of Liverpool Street Station, I found myself exploring the various rooms of the adjacent former Great Eastern Hotel, something I had never done previously en route to Norwich or Colchester.

I was perplexed by the decoration in the so-called Hamilton Hall, immediately next door to the station, with its late nineteenth-century plasterwork:-

The reason for this was that the hotel – originally designed by Charles Barry father and son, and opened with a great banquet in May 1884 – was extended at the end of the century by Colonel Edis (he was the Commanding Officer of the Artists’ Rifles) who developed Hamilton Hall following the model of the Palais Soubise in Paris – hence the pseudo-Rococo plasterwork.

There is also somewhere in the hotel, although, for obvious reasons, not available to the casual visitor, a magnificent Masonic Temple:-

My conclusion from looking round is that the station could probably benefit from some TLC, including the restoration of the wonderful railway shed, but this stops short of putting two office blocks on top which will block out the daylight which give the station its character.