Bardon Mill Station Signal Box

Railway signal box, built around 1874, by and for the North Eastern Railway Company for the Newcastle and Carlisle Railway. Type N1 design of the 1870s-1890s.

MATERIALS: red brick laid in English Garden Wall bond with a timber porch and stairs to the upper operating floor; Welsh slate roof with round ridge tiles to the ridge and hips.

EXTERIOR: prominently sited on the south side of the railway track, the two-storey signal box is built in red brick, laid to English Garden Wall bond, with foundations built in rock-faced coursed stone and a low-pitched hipped Welsh slate roof. A raised operating floor is accessed on the east side via a right-hand turn wooden stair and an external timber porch with a three-over-three window and a C20 external door. The north front (track side) and sides are continuously glazed with horizontal sliding sashes, with regular, narrow glazing bars; one sash on the east elevation and two sashes on the north and west elevations. The windows sit on a plain stone string course. At ground floor level there is a locker room with an access door below the porch in the east wall and a window in the north wall, both with stone lintels.

INTERIOR: the raised operating floor retains a glass nine-pane internal porch door and ceiling with a timber hip, and jack and common roof rafters partially exposed and painted. Only part of the wooden operating floor is present following the recent removal of a reconditioned McKenzie & Holland 20-lever frame and block shelf said to be inserted around 1966. It was originally set to the rear of the box with the operator, unusually, facing away from the tracks. The locker room retains the brick support for a fireplace or stove originally set in the south wall of the raised operating floor and a nine-pane timber window frame with regular, narrow glazing bars in the north wall.