West Hampstead Fire Station

West Hampstead Fire Station

Fire station built in 1901 by the Fire Brigade Branch of the London County Council Architects Department, with job architect W A Scott.

The building is constructed of brick with roughcast rendered walls and glazed brick to part of the rear elevation. It has a hipped slate roof with tall brick chimney-stacks. The elevation to West End Lane features two bays of part-glazed engine shed doors (manually operated, probably installed in the 1920s and not original) and a polygonal bow window of stone with transom and mullion casements. The upper two floors have bands of five-light casements to the outer bays flanking central three-light bands, all windows featuring small leaded panes. Metal period capital lettering affixed to the elevation reads: LCC / Fire Brigade Station / A.D 1901. A striking tall roughcast watch tower rises from ground floor level to appear above the roof, topped with a wooden belvedere and copper pyramidal roof. The return to the south has further casement windows and a bay window with stone mullions. The rear elevation features a double gabled wing with a polygonal bow window on the right-hand bay and three-light casements to each floor above. To the left is the rear access to the appliance room with replaced doors, above which is a first-floor balcony bounded by iron railings. The vast majority of original windows survive.

The plan form is largely unaltered aside from removal of a small number of partitions. Interior features of special interest include: the stairwell, corridors and landings lined with russet glazed brick; original metal staircase handrail and balustrade; ground floor mess room with half-height panelling, large segmental arches to window alcoves, bracketed mantle-shelf and segmental-arched panelled door (fireplace surround removed); watch room with similar large arches to the bay window alcove; segmental arched doorways, some in glazed brick with original timber doors; simple fireplaces and joinery on the upper floors; and a Jacobs ladder inside the watchtower.

The station was constructed during the period when the Fire Brigade's most characterful buildings were erected. At this time the Fire Brigade was part of the London County Council, and from 1896 new stations were designed by architects including Owen Fleming and Charles Canning Winmill, formerly of the LCC Housing Department. They brought an avant-garde approach evolved for new social housing to the Fire Brigade Division. While some stations were built to standardised plans, others were highly experimental and sensitive to local context. West Hampstead exemplifies this approach with clean simple lines suggestive of modernity, traditional materials of stone and brick, and vernacular forms including canted bays, leaded casement windows within stone mullions, and flared eaves.

W A Scott designed the station to fit a constrained suburban site, rejecting the standardised plan of a multi-storey municipal building with firemen's accommodation in favour of a three-storey domestic-style station supplemented by four firemen's cottages to the rear.

The foundation stone was laid on 24 June 1901 by J D Gilbert, Chairman of the Fire Brigade Committee of the LCC. The area had previously been served by stations at St John's Wood (established 1870) and Hampstead village (established 1874), but suburbanisation necessitated further provision. As described by The Fireman journal in August 1901, West Hampstead was "a district which until quite recently was open fields, but which is now almost entirely built over, and will, it is estimated, before many years have a population of 200,000". The station originally housed horse-drawn engines with stabling for four horses, probably at the back of the appliance room, and accommodation for a station officer, nine firemen and two coachmen and their families.