Fulham Fire Station

Fulham Fire Station

A four-storey fire station built in 1895–6 by the Fire Brigade Branch of the London County Council Architects Department, with Robert Pearsall as chief architect and Thomas Blashill as job architect. The building was refurbished and extended in 1994 by the Welling Partnership.

The station is constructed of red brick with stone details and an engineering brick plinth, with stock brick to the rear and a tile roof (renewed) featuring lead cresting and enriched brick slab chimney stacks.

The detached building has a prominent position in the streetscape, emphasised by its gabled façade, corner turrets and tall chimneys. The front elevation is symmetrical, with two appliance bays positioned in an advancing central section topped by a lead crested pyramidal roof and gabled dormers that break through the corbelled eaves. The appliance bays contain replaced timber doors set within rubbed brick segmental arched openings with tiled spandrels, flanked by buttresses with stone pinnacles. Below the moulded stone string course is metal lettering reading 'London County Council'. To either side of the central section is a bay containing paired sash windows with stone lintels, sills, transoms and, unusually, a mullion to the upper pane. All façade windows follow this treatment. At each corner stand turrets with conical roofs, finials and lucarnes. The upper storeys contain pairs of windows, with the fourth storey windows set within gabled dormers and the ground floor containing four trios of windows, two on each side of the appliance bays. Behind the roof ridge on the left rises a striking watchtower—a round tower on an octagonal base with slit windows having stone dressings and crenellated stone capping. This rare surviving feature is notable for its considerable height. The sides and rear reflect functional requirements, with several extensions added over time, most significantly a stair tower to the west added in 1994. Two stone plaques between the appliance bays record the laying of foundations in November 1895 and the station's reopening in March 1994. The fire lamp on the main elevation is a replica, but the original metal numbering recording the station's date (1896), the LCC crest above it, and the metal lettering reading 'Fire / Brigade / Station / Fulham' remain in place.

The interior retains features of special interest including the appliance room (though walls and floors have been replaced), a staircase with its original handrail, accommodation on the upper floors preserving a number of fireplaces with timber surrounds, several surviving original timber doors, and segmental arched openings in the ground floor corridors. Much of the interior was refurbished in 1994.

To the east, handsome brick gate piers with stone caps (formerly part of the return access), brick and stone dwarf walls and iron railings survive.

The station opened in 1895–6 to house twelve married firemen, six single firemen, one officer and one coachman, with four horses stabled and accommodation for a steam fire engine, manual engine, hose tender and horse cart. The building cost £11,570 and the site £2,000. Its opening was attended by the newly appointed Chief Officer Commander Lionel de Lantour Wells. The station was adapted for motor use in 1913.

Fulham Fire Station exemplifies the development of fire station design by the LCC's Fire Brigade architects in the 1890s. Following the establishment of the publicly funded Metropolitan Fire Brigade in 1866 and the evolution of the fire station as an identifiable building type in the 1870s, designs had grown increasingly sophisticated by the 1890s. Under Robert Pearsall's influence after 1889, when he headed the new Fire Brigade Section of the London County Council (which took over from the Metropolitan Board of Works), stations deployed increasingly elaborate Gothic details including pinnacles, buttresses and terracotta decoration alongside compositional devices such as corner turrets and varying roof profiles—conical, pitched and pyramidal—creating visual interest for stations occupying larger sites with more substantial accommodation and multiple street elevations. Fulham replaced an earlier station built on the adjacent site in the 1870s under Captain Eyre Massey Shaw's expansion programme. Of other stations built under the first LCC period, Wandsworth, Brompton, Dulwich, Rotherhithe and Kingsland Road have been demolished; Manchester Square, Shoreditch, Bethnal Green and New Cross survive, with all but the last listed Grade II.