Euston Fire Station Including Boundary Walls, Gatepiers And Railings

Euston Fire Station Including Boundary Walls, Gatepiers and Railings

A fire station with residential flats above, built 1901-2 and designed by HFT Cooper of the Fire Brigade Branch of the London County Council Architects' Department. The building was constructed by Stimpson & Co and altered and extended around 1920, with further modifications made in the later 20th century.

The structure is built of red brick laid in English bond with Portland stone dressings. The basement employs yellow stock brick, while Portland stone ashlar facing is used at ground and third floor levels. The roofs are slate.

The building is L-shaped in plan, with its main frontage facing south-east towards Euston Road, set back behind a forecourt. The ground floor originally housed the fire station with residential flats above, served by a central well stair. A private entrance and stair in the south-west corner provided access to the Third Officer's flat on the fourth floor. A passage from Euston Square originally led to a yard and stables in the north-east corner, which have since been demolished. Around 1920, this passage was infilled and a single-storey extension was added to the appliance room on the south-east side. The original appliance bays have been converted to serve as a reception area, watch room and offices, while the extension now functions as the appliance room.

The exterior displays a lively Arts and Crafts domestic style with asymmetrical façades, irregular height and massing, projecting square and canted bays, and oriels. The roofline is particularly picturesque, featuring deep eaves interrupted by projecting gabled bays, dormers and tall chimney stacks. The fenestration is varied, combining mullioned-and-transomed windows and narrower two-light vertical windows with some oculi. Metal casements feature leaded lights. The building rises principally to five storeys with six storeys in places, plus attics, with pitched roofs, the roof to the main south-east block being particularly steeply pitched.

The main south-east elevation displays, at ground floor level from east to west, two appliance bays with a patterned frieze bearing the inscription 'L.C.C FIRE BRIGADE STATION EUSTON 1902' in bronze lettering, and a round-arched window with keystone. The first and second floors each have four flush-framed mullion-and-transom windows, while the third floor, faced in stone, features narrower windows set in splayed reveals. The fourth floor has three canted stone oriels of three lights with quoined surrounds, the left-hand example rising to a fifth floor with a gable above. The elevation terminates in a canted staircase bay of two lights rising to the third floor; the upper section is more steeply canted with three lights and stone mullions beneath a circular roof, surmounted by a gable with an oculus and two small rectangular lights below. A single-storey porch with a segmental-arched doorway and slate roof is positioned in the angle between the canted bay and the return elevation.

The south-west elevation facing Euston Square is dominated by a projecting rectangular bay on the right with a gabled roof, and a canted bay on the left with a hipped roof and glazed clerestory. Two large mullion-and-transom bay windows occupy the ground-floor level, with a formerly infilled entrance to the yard positioned between them. An asymmetrically-placed canted oriel rises through the third and fourth floors with a diagonal balcony linked to the projecting north bay.

A single-storey extension dating to around 1920 extends to the east and now serves as the appliance room; this is not of special architectural interest. A modern drill tower stands to the rear and is similarly not of special interest.

The interior was extensively refurbished in the 1990s. Some original features survive, including doors, dado panelling in the ground-floor former recreation room, and fireplaces, though the space is generally much altered. A stone stair with a plain iron balustrade is present.

The boundary walls, gatepiers and railings form important subsidiary features. Low brick walls with stone copings and stone piers with gambrel-shaped heads enclose the forecourt on the south-east side and basement area on the south-west side. The gatepiers to the angle of the forecourt feature inset geometric panels to the head, while those to the basement entrance have torpedo-shaped heads. Wrought-iron railings incorporate flattened sections in a portcullis design.

The building opened on 27 November 1902, replacing the Metropolitan Board of Works fire station at 133-135 Great Portland Street. Euston served as the headquarters of the North Division of the London Fire Brigade under the command of a Third Officer. Domestic accommodation was provided for divisional staff on the first floor and for the Third Officer on the fourth floor.

The station stands at the pinnacle of the London County Council's remarkable group of fire stations constructed between 1896 and 1914. Following the transfer of fire brigade responsibility from the Metropolitan Board of Works to the newly-formed London County Council in 1889, a new architectural approach emerged. From 1896, stations were designed by a group of architects led by Owen Fleming and Charles Canning Winmill, both formerly of the LCC Housing Department. These architects brought highly experimental methods evolved through social housing design to the Fire Brigade Division (as it was known from 1899), drawing on diverse influences to create unique, bespoke station buildings. This exceptional period in fire station design extended to the outbreak of the First World War. The architectural evolution of London's fire stations had begun in the 1880s under the Metropolitan Fire Brigade architect Robert Pearsall, when stations first acquired true architectural distinction, most notably in the rich Gothic style exemplified by Bishopsgate. The major transformation came with the building boom of the 1890s-1900s, which furnished the Brigade with some of its most characterful structures.