Greyfriars bus station

Built at a cost of £7,250,000 (£50,000,000 at 2013 prices), Greyfriars bus station was opened in 1976, replacing the previous facility at Derngate, and was designed by Arup Associates and built by Kyle Stewart. The building was designed to accommodate 40,000 passengers and 1,700 buses a day and included a complex brief of a bus station, with car park over, topped by a three-storey office block (Greyfriars House). The office block was supported over the clear spans below by a complex structural design based around reinforced concrete trusses. The new station was built in response to the then needs of Northampton: supplying well-organised local travel for the rapidly increasing population of the urban area, bringing visitors into the commercial centre of the town, and providing ready access to the new Grosvenor Centre. The car park later reopened, although it closed for good a year later after the Council was unwilling to make the investment (reported at the time to be on the order of £250,000) to rectify the situation. ==Services==

The main operators at Greyfriars bus station were Stagecoach, Centrebus, Uno and Meridian Buses. Some smaller operators also used the facility. Buses ran from the bus station all around the town and went as far afield as Milton Keynes, Bedford, Peterborough, Leicester, Rugby and Bicester. National Express Coaches also operated to Northampton on routes serving many other parts of the country. Services included a travel centre, operated by Stagecoach, as well as a newsagent, public toilets, optician, hairdressers, barber shop and a large cafe. ==Closure==

As the bus station was below both Greyfriars House and the car park, only a small amount of natural light reached the concourse, which did not help the building's reputation. It was listed in a survey carried out by The Guardian, for Channel 4's Demolition series, as the third-most hated building in Britain and dubbed "the mouth of Hell". In 2009, Northampton Borough Council announced plans to redevelop the bus station along with the neighbouring Grosvenor Centre. The plan proposed moving the bus station to a new site, and then extending the Grosvenor Centre on to the cleared land. In September 2011 it was announced that the site of the former Fish Market was the preferred site for the new bus station and that work to build the new bus station could start as soon as September 2012. The building was expected to be finished by May 2013, although the date of completion was later delayed. At the time of this announcement it was claimed by the council that the cost of refurbishing the Greyfriars building would be over £30 million, with currently £500,000 spent on superficial maintenance. Greyfriars closed after the final bus services on 1 March 2014, with North Gate opening the following day. ==Redevelopment==

Demolition work within Greyfriars House began in March 2013 with works to strip the interiors of the office spaces and clearing of the overgrown landscaped courtyards within the office complex, which had lain untended since Barclaycard vacated some 16 years earlier. The bus station was demolished on Sunday 15 March 2015 in a controlled implosion by DSM Demolition. using over 2,000 separate charges. 414 properties were evacuated, and the Grosvenor Centre was closed the night prior to the demolition – which, scheduled to take place at an unannounced time between 8 am and 10 am, occurred at approximately 9.40 am. ==Gallery==

Image:Greyfriars901.JPG|Inside Greyfriars bus station Image:Greyfriars903.JPG|A subway entrance to the bus station Image:Greyfriars Bus Station, Northampton - geograph.org.uk - 178651.jpg|Another entrance to the bus station ==References==