The former Stockton and Darlington Railway's Heighington and Aycliffe Railway Station and attached workers' housing

The former Stockton and Darlington Railway's Heighington and Aycliffe Railway Station and attached workers' housing

Railway station and railway workers' housing built 1826–1827 as a cottage and proto-station by John Carter for the Stockton & Darlington Railway. A pair of cottages was added by 1839. The building was converted to a pub in 1984 with an extension added to the west cottage.

The materials are squared, coursed sandstone for the original building, with rendered cottages. The roofs are Welsh slate with brick chimney stacks.

The original building has a T-shaped plan, presenting as a single storey facing the railway line on the west side, but as two storeys facing the original coal yard to the south. Originally the two floors may have lacked internal connection. The upper floor was originally accessed via a doorway from the lineside platform, now reduced to a window in the leg of the T plan. The head of the T is now a single room but was formerly subdivided into two. It retains a small, now blocked booking office window overlooking the approach to the original doorway. The floor at yard level below largely retains its original plan form, including storage rooms and two domestic rooms with fireplaces, all interconnected and accessed from a single door to the yard. The 1830s cottage forming the centre of the building retains its one-up one-down plan form, also accessed from the yard, but is now interconnected to the rest of the building. The eastern cottage's plan form has been altered by the 1984 addition of the southern wing and single storey eastern lean-to.

The original building is quoined, with windows having similarly dressed monolithic lintels and projecting stone sills, generally fitted with renewed multi-paned vertical sashes. Some stonework adjacent to the eastern cottage is rendered. The roof is low-pitched and hipped, with end stacks at the east and south ends of the T plan. The pair of cottages extending to the east has a ridgeline level with the eaves of the original building, with the upper floor forming an attic storey. The cottages' roof is similarly low-pitched with a hipped east end and a central square ridge stack. Windows are generally multi-paned sashes with projecting stone sills. The 1984 extension is sympathetically detailed.

On the platform elevation facing west, the original doorway, now reduced to a window, is set centrally at the north end of the leg of the T-plan. To its left, in the south-facing wall of the head of the T-plan, is the former ticket-office window, a small now blocked opening. To the south of the original doorway there is a window. The doorway set centrally to the head of the T-plan was formerly a window, flanked at low level by small basement windows.

On the roadside elevation to the north, the road ramps up to the railway's level crossing, leaving a narrow gully between it and the basement or yard level of the building. There are no doorways in this elevation, only windows. The original building, of two broad bays, has windows to both floors. The two former cottages have noticeably smaller windows, the centre cottage having a single window to the first floor, the east-end cottage having a single window to each floor.

The southern yard elevations show the original building accessed at yard level via a door at the northern end of the leg of the T-plan. Above the door is a small window to the upper floor, with a larger window to each floor in both the adjacent south and east elevations. The south elevation of the leg of the T-plan is blind. The south elevation of the centre cottage has a door and window at yard level and two smaller windows above. The southern elevation of the eastern cottage is replaced by the 1984 extension, the southern gable wall of which carries a large low relief panel depicting the steam engine Locomotion No.1 and a 19th-century family group.

The interior has been extensively remodelled but retains some 19th-century features including brick vaulting to the rooms on the ground floor of the head of the T-plan, and a number of fireplaces. These include a large example formed with monolithic jambs and lintels on the upper floor of the original building and simpler fireplaces on the lower floor in both the original building and the western cottage, formed in brickwork.

Stone flags and kerbing considered to be part of the former station's low platform remain in situ. The cobbled surfacing shown in historic photographs may also survive concealed beneath gravel and vegetation. Extending to the south of the original building are the stone-built end of the former coal drops, including sections of rail.