Heighington Signal Box

Heighington Signal Box

This is a signal box opened in 1872 for the North Eastern Railway Central Division, possibly designed by Thomas Prosser, the company's architect. It follows the Type C1 standard design, the earliest design type used by the Central Division. The lever frame was replaced in 1906, and the building was extended around 1912.

The structure is two storeys in red brick laid to English Garden Wall bond, with the first floor stepped in using two courses of plinth bricks. It has a gabled Welsh slate roof with the ridge running parallel to the track.

The trackside elevation has continuously glazed first floor windows, divided slightly irregularly by timber mullions with regular, narrow glazing bars. The lowest of three runs of panes is blind. The far left window is a horizontal sliding sash with each sash measuring 3 by 3 panes. The windows sit on a plain stone string course encircling the building. The ground floor trackside elevation is plain brickwork. About 1.5 metres in from the left gable, an intermittent vertical run of queen closer bricks marks where the signal box was extended.

The left gable contains a timber stair and external first floor porch, the porch having a 2 by 2 window. Glazing similar in style to the trackside elevation extends from the front elevation to the porch. The roof overhangs on flying moulded rafters supported by exposed purlin and wall plate ends, which are embellished.

The right gable is similar to the left but without the stair. It has a doorway and slit window at ground floor, both with plain stone lintels.

The rear elevation includes a slightly offset chimney stack with a rebuilt top. There is a horizontal sliding sash at the left end of the first floor, similar in design to the trackside glazing. Below is a 2 by 3 slit window under a plain stone lintel. At the right end of the first floor is a window without glazing bars, presumed to be a modern replacement.

The interior contains an 11-lever frame by McKenzie and Holland of Worcester, installed in 1906. At inspection this lever frame remained operational.

Heighington Signal Box dates to the initial phase of signal box development in the late 1860s and 1870s, and is one of the earliest surviving signal boxes in the country, with only about four examples thought to pre-date it in Britain. The parallel ridge line to the track allowed seamless future extension, an approach widely adopted nationally. The box was almost seamlessly extended around 1912 to accommodate signalling controls for a new electrified line serving Newton Aycliffe station.

The signal box has additional group value with the former railway station buildings across the line at the level crossing. The station buildings, originally called Aycliffe Lane and dating to 1826-27, were designed to include a public house serving as a waiting room. These buildings survive complete with the low platform and continue in use as a public house.

Heighington has special historic interest as the site where in 1825 George Stephenson's Locomotion No.1 was first put on the rails of the Stockton and Darlington Railway to inaugurate the world's first passenger service. The signal box is well preserved and retains an increasingly rare pre-First World War lever frame.