Looking down the River Witham with on the right The Tower Bar (part of The Engine Shed) and on the left University of Lincoln’s Library in Lincoln, Lincolnshire.
The building that is now the Engine Shed was constructed in 1874 for the Great Northern Railway (GNR) as Shed 40A, with four railway tracks but had been disused since 1964. Although the Brayford site had been derelict for many years, there had been vast regeneration plans for the site including a new theatre since the early 1970s, which were killed off by Lincoln City Council in the mid-1970s for being too financially extravagant.
For many years Lincoln only had the Theatre Royal as its main venue. Although the local council had no enthusiasm for a theatre or venue on the Brayford site, the University resumed plans for a much-needed music venue. The building is at the eastern end of the university campus, and is near the point where the River Witham joins Brayford Pool from the south. The River Witham lies directly across the front of the building. There were two phases in the design the first became what is now the Engine Shed, and the second was the LPAC. The consulting engineers were Ward Cole, who designed many other new buildings in the Brayford area.
The architects were Stem Architects (then known as UL Architects) who are based in Sparkhouse Studios, and have designed most of the other buildings for the University. It is a 1500-seat venue. It is part of the University of Lincoln’s campus and lies next to the university library, which is another former railway building, built by the Great Central Railway. The Tower Bar offers hot food on two levels, and are open from 10am. The Engine Shed is also home to the University of Lincoln’s Students Union and SOAP Centre. The university union used to have another bar called the Delph Bar, on the opposite side of the campus.
The University’s Library is located in the Great Central Warehouse ("GCW") building, a renovated former industrial railway goods warehouse, the University Library was opened in December 2004 on the Brayford campus. In total, the university’s libraries house more than a third of a million items.
The GCW was constructed in 1907 by the Great Central Railway. It spent the second half of the twentieth century as a builder’s warehouse before falling into disrepair in 1998. It was converted into a library (designed by the University’s in-house team of architects) and was formally opened in 2004 by the chief executive of the UK’s Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education.
In 2005, the conversion won gold and silver for conservation and regeneration at the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) Regional Awards in Leicester. It has also gained awards from the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA).
