Police Station and Former Magistrates' Court

Police Station and Former Magistrates' Court

This building was constructed in 1888 by the West Riding County Surveyor in the Queen Anne Revival style. It comprises two parallel ranges, each of two storeys, arranged to accommodate both a police station and magistrates' court within a single structure.

The exterior is built from red brick and terracotta with stone sills, beneath a slate roof laid to diminishing courses with mitred hips and lead ridges finished with ornate metal finials. The principal elevation faces east and is asymmetrical, extending across 14 bays. A stone-topped plinth course runs along the base, with moulded cornice and eaves bands in terracotta.

The southern three bays project slightly forward and rise to a Dutch gable featuring a central round window and terracotta decoration including paired Yorkshire roses. The public entrance to the court occupies the fourth bay, a single doorway set within a doorcase topped by a scrolled pediment, with an embossed terracotta sign reading "Court Entrance". The fifth bay is blind to both floors. Bays six and seven break forward at first floor level, topped by a shaped gable displaying the date stone "1887" with a sunburst in the semicircular pediment above. Bay eight contains the police station entrance, detailed similarly to the court entrance with a terracotta sign reading "Police Office" and retaining its original blue police lantern hung from a decorative bracket. Bays eleven to thirteen repeat the detailing of the southern bays but without the Yorkshire roses on the Dutch gable. The northernmost bay houses the Magistrates' entrance, again with a pedimented terracotta doorcase and signage, flanked by a round window retaining its original grid-iron pattern joinery.

The windows throughout are generally segmentally arched with fluted and corniced keystones in terracotta, set above stone sills. Most window joinery has been replaced in uPVC, approximating the original sashes with six-pane upper sashes above undivided lower sashes.

The roofline is distinguished by tall, slightly ornamented brick chimney stacks retaining decorative-banded chimney pots. The ridge ends of the front range are finished with decorative finials featuring sunflowers. The rear range retains the base of a square ventilator with decorative leadwork, although its original cupola has been removed. Simpler finials survive on the rear range.

The building plan accommodates the police station across most of the ground floor via a central entrance, with cells occupying the original rear range. The upper floor was devoted to the magistrates' court, accessed via separate stair halls at either end: the southern stair served as the public entrance, the northern as the Magistrates' entrance. The main courtroom occupies the full rear range above the cells, with the front range providing circulation spaces, the magistrates' retiring room and auxiliary accommodation.

The police station interior has been extensively remodelled, although the narrow staircase connecting the cells to the dock in the court survives. The court side of the building has undergone significantly less alteration. The stair halls and circulation spaces retain decorative relief tiling to dado height and around doorways and archways. The public staircase features wrought iron balustrades. The Magistrates' staircase is a timber open-well design, with the top landing lit by two stained glass windows and a third lighting a washroom. The courtroom retains ornate plasterwork to ceiling and cornice, windows with stained glass, three full-height portraits of local Victorian dignitaries, and its complete original suite of oak courtroom furniture.

The street frontage is bounded by a stone-coped brick wall, originally topped with iron railings now lost, punctuated by tall gate piers with ornamented stone caps and ball finials.

Flat-roofed extensions to the north, south and east of the rear range are excluded from listing protection on the grounds that they are not of special architectural or historic interest. Similarly, apart from the staircase connecting cells to dock, the interior features of the police station are not listed as being of special architectural or historic interest.