Railway Institute And Forecourt Walls

The Railway Workmen's Institute and forecourt walls, dated 1911, were built for the North-Eastern Railway Company. The structure is made of grey-red brick, featuring three rows of stretchers and one row of Flemish bond, with light-red brick and artificial stone dressings. It has a Welsh slate roof and brick chimneys. The grey-red brick walls are topped with sandstone coping, and the building is designed in a Neo-Georgian style.

The main building is two storeys high, divided by a string course, and consists of one bay, five bays, and one bay. The taller end bays have open pediments and project forward, with brick quoins at the ground floor and banded pilasters above. The right end bay features later 20th-century double doors and a fanlight within a pedimented doorcase, which has alternating brick and stone jambs, a dated keystone, and a plaque inscribed with "NE RAILWAY INSTITUTE." The windows are 15-pane sashes with moulded sills and aprons, and they are topped with gauged brick and stone flat arches that include keystones. The left bay has a ground-floor window beneath a pediment, while the upper windows of the end bays have segmental heads and surrounds with swept, carved bases and scrolled pediments. The first floor of the five-bay centre section features pilastered bay divisions, and the central upper window has a carved stone apron with a swag and fruit design. The eaves cornice is dentilled wood, and the hipped roof has two axial chimneys located in the middle of the front span, along with two later 20th-century dormers.

Attached to the main building is a single-storey, five-bay wing that also has 15-pane sashes in similar surrounds. The central bay of this wing is taller and projects forward, featuring a semicircular relieving arch above the window and a low parapet with ramped coping. The roof includes a central louvre on the ridge, topped with a cupola and finial.

The main building has a four-bay left return, while the wing has a canted, one-bay right return with a Diocletian window above.

The forecourt walls consist of a pair of low, square piers in front of the right end doorway, linked by short ogee-plan sections to a low, stepped front wall. The left return section has rounded corners, and the walls are finished with chamfered stone coping.