Former Chadderton Police Station

Former Chadderton Police Station

This is a red Accrington brick building with sandstone dressings and slate roofs, mainly laid in English garden wall bond. The plan is complex, comprising a front range parallel to Victoria Street with the original Inspector's house forming the left end and extending into a rear wing. Court chambers occupy the first floor centre, with the courtroom behind the front range at the building's centre. Police station facilities were originally on the ground floor, with an extended custody suite to the rear left and dormitory and other facilities in wings and cross wings to the rear right.

The Victoria Street frontage is two storeys with seven unequal bays topped by four tall stone-banded ridge stacks, that to the left gable being truncated. The odd bays have Dutch gables surmounted and flanked by ball-topped finials. The even bays are narrower, each originally with an entrance with an ornamented lintel, that to the centre carrying the date 1901, though this was converted into a window at the time of survey. The end bays each have a ground floor canted bay window topped with a shaped parapet with ball finials. The bay to the right of centre is the widest and projects forward, including projecting stone sculpture incorporating the text "County Police" between the ground and first floor windows and a cartouche to the centre of the gable. The elevation is unified by a stone plinth course, ground and first floor sill bands, and a ground floor lintel band. First floor windows have individual drip courses rather than a continuous lintel band. All openings are stone-framed with chamfered reveals, the windows having stone mullions and transoms which are similarly chamfered. Joinery and glazing appear to be later replacements.

The rear elevation is plainer and more domestic in character, generally with brick-arched window openings with sash windows, although a number of windows have been altered with inserted stone lintels. To the very rear of the building there is a stone door surround matching those to Victoria Street, although this entrance has been bricked up. Later twentieth-century alterations and extensions are not of special interest.

Most of the interior has been reordered with the loss of original features such as fireplaces, joinery and plasterwork. However, a group of original features survives which are of special interest. The principal staircase is Jacobean in style, featuring oak splat banisters and lit by a stained glass stair window. It leads to a first floor landing serving a set of oak architraved doors exhibiting a hierarchy of forms. The principal doorway is pedimented with a six-panelled door leading to the Magistrates' retiring room. Another doorway has a panelled reveal and leads to the former courtroom, whilst a third doorway has a door that is part glazed with stained glass. The Magistrates' retiring room is a large, high-ceilinged room occupying the largest bay in the front range, with oak panelling and a Jacobean Revival ornamented ceiling. At the time of survey, the courtroom was partially subdivided with a stud partition and the ornamental kingpost roof structure was concealed by a suspended ceiling. The custody suite on the ground floor includes an original set of four cells, but the general layout and fittings of the suite are mainly a product of later twentieth-century alterations.