Boothstown Lancashire Mines Rescue Station

The Boothstown Lancashire Mines Rescue Station is a mines rescue station built between 1932 and 1933, with some minor alterations and additions since then. It was designed by the architectural firm Bradshawe, Hope and Gass of Bolton for the Lancashire and Cheshire Coal Owners. The building is constructed of red brick laid in Flemish bond, featuring light-coloured headers and ashlar copings. It has a hipped roof covered with plain tiles and tall brick stacks on the side walls.

The layout includes a two-storey range facing the road, with service, laboratory, and storage rooms on either side of an unfloored three-bay garage for rescue vehicles. At the rear, there is a long single-storey range with a flat roof, which incorporates smaller glazed pitched roofs over observation halls that flank unlit training galleries.

The east elevation is two storeys high and consists of seven bays, with advanced outer two-bay wings on either side of a set-back three-bay center. This center features a shallow pitch-roofed glazed canopy that connects the wings, which have stacked four-light windows beneath brick soldier-arched heads. The windows are framed with transomed timber glazing bars. The wings have shallow cambered parapets with pitched copings and end finials. The center three bays include folding triple half-glazed garage doors, topped by four-light flat-roofed dormer windows. The gabled side elevations to the north and south extend beyond the line of the frontage range.

On the north side of the rear elevation, there is a tiered louvred ventilator that serves the station laboratory. The stepped seven-bay single-storey range at the rear has a flat roof and incorporates a tall square chimney. An extension provides additional garaging with curved walling.

The interior retains much of its original form and fittings, including those in the training galleries, making it a remarkably complete and rare example of a 'state of the art' mines rescue station. It includes vehicle garaging, gas and equipment testing facilities, a laboratory, oxygen and equipment storage areas, and training galleries with observation halls. The building was officially opened on November 18th, 1933.