The Woodlands

The Woodlands is a former railway station, now a private house, located on Lartington Lane. It was built in 1859 for the South Durham and Lancashire Union Railway Company. The building features dressed and ashlar sandstone, a weather-boarded waiting room, and roofs covered with Welsh slate and bands of fish-scale tiles, along with stone chimney stacks. The structure has a linked linear plan, consisting of an L-plan house with a parallel rear wing, and the station buildings are attached to the left side of the house. It is designed in a Tudor style.

The house is two stories tall with two bays, the left bay projecting and cross-gabled, and a porch located in the re-entrant angle. It has raised quoins and a chamfered plinth. The porch features a replaced door set in a pointed, chamfered surround with a keystone dated 1859, and a 2-light window with shouldered heads at the front. The main block has ovolo-moulded windows in raised surrounds with alternating jambs, including a cross window with a 2-light half-dormer above on the right and a 5-light transomed bay window with a 2-light window above on the left. The steeply-pitched roofs have overhanging verges and eaves with bargeboards and exposed rafters, and the conjoined ridge stacks are corniced with ornamental stone chimney pots.

Attached to the left of the house is a one-storey, 4-bay waiting room that features 3-light windows above a weatherboarded dado and has a hipped roof with overhanging, bracketed eaves. Next to it is a one-storey, one-bay ticket office, which has a pair of cross windows in a projecting gabled bay and a steeply-pitched hipped roof with a flat top. A corniced stack rises from the rear wall of the ticket office. Additionally, there is a short L-plan section of wall enclosing former toilets attached to the left, which has chamfered coping.

The right side of the house features a stepped external chimney, and the return bay of the rear wing has two 3-light windows and a low-pitched hipped roof.