The Old Fire Station

The Old Fire Station, Tarporley

A former volunteer fire brigade station dating to 1865, built in red brick with a pitched slate roof. The building was established by the 11th Earl of Haddington on land he donated for community use, and housed what is believed to be one of the earliest volunteer fire brigades in the country.

The exterior is constructed of red brick laid in English Garden Wall Bond on the main south elevation facing Park Road and the west side, with a plain east elevation. A pitched slate roof with slate ridge copings surmounts the building, with a ridge stack at the east gable end. The most prominent feature is a large central brick-arched double doorway with sandstone keystone, fitted with original timber plank sliding doors. A small coal shaft door is set into the east wall, connecting the fire station to the adjacent hearse house and leading down to a coal store beneath a warming range that feeds the chimney. A single horizontal sliding sash window with iron bars on the inside is set towards the east end of the north rear elevation, with each sash divided into 8 panes. A cast-iron bell on a mount is fixed to the east gable end.

Internally, the building follows a simple one-room plan on an east-west axis, with a full-height ceiling open to a timber king post truss roof. The east end, which has no king post truss, features a central range with chimney breast above and a hatch to the coal store beneath. A drain runs through the centre of the floor. A toilet was added to the northeast corner around 1939 following Second World War regulations that stipulated fire stations had to be manned and equipped with telephone, siren and toilet facilities.

The fire station was constructed in 1865 in preparation for the brigade's first engine, a Shand Mason London Brigade horse-drawn manual engine, which arrived in February 1866. The brigade served a large area of central Cheshire, attending village, estate and mill fires and sourcing water from ditches, wells and ponds near the station and en route until mains water reached Tarporley in 1892, when hydrants were introduced. In 1938 to 1939, a toilet, siren and telephone line were installed. The fire station relocated to a new site on the High Street in 1957 to accommodate modern fire vehicles, and subsequently moved to new purpose-built premises in 1997. Following the 1957 move, the original station was used as a store and was later officially opened as a museum around 2001, supported by Cheshire Fire and Rescue Service. The museum is now arranged with equipment dating to around 1914 and houses an engine brought in from Peplow identical to the original Tarporley engine, which has since been lost.

The building retains strong group value with the adjacent former police station and hearse house, together forming a significant civic group in the village centre built on land specifically donated in the 19th century by the 11th Earl of Haddington for purposes of community use. The Old Fire Station represents a rare and unique survival of a simply designed early fire station, providing important physical evidence of primitive fire-fighting methods in rural areas before the introduction of modern fire vehicles.