Hammersmith Police Station

Hammersmith Police Station is a Divisional Station for the Metropolitan Police, completed in 1939. It was designed by Donald McMorran of the architectural partnership Farquharson and McMorran, who had won a design competition the previous year.

The building is constructed with pink narrow bricks to its front and return elevations, with Portland stone and Cornish granite plinth on a reinforced concrete frame. Stock bricks form the rear elevations, and the roof is metal. The building follows a long, narrow rectangular plan divided into three sections by two courtyards. The principal offices and conference room occupy the front block, open-plan offices and canteen are positioned to the rear, and a central cell block is accessed by a separate rear entrance. A side entrance serves the offices and basement locker-rooms.

The exterior presents three storeys and a basement in a five-bay composition centred on a principal entrance. Rusticated quoins and console brackets frame a coat of arms carved by G Kruger Gray. All front windows are metal casements set in timber surrounds. Those to the ground floor sit under voussoirs in the granite plinth with recesses indicating blocked basement fenestration beneath. First-floor windows are set in architrave surrounds with shallow console brackets and linked by a continuous sill band. Second-floor windows are positioned in the piers between lower windows, featuring keystones and blind recesses above. The composition is crowned by a single tall stack of brick and Portland stone that forms a crucial element of the design. Two blue lamps on iron brackets at ground-floor level provide a traditional police station note. A square-panelled porte cochere with niche above gives access to a side road leading to the side entrance and stables.

The side and rear elevations are of stock brick with upper storeys containing timber sash windows under gauged brick heads. These windows are remarkable for their thick timber and sash chains. Glass bricks light the ground-floor cells and surround the central door to the main stairwell. A disabled ramp was added in 1994–5, incorporating bronze posts from the original steps.

The interior of the front block retains substantial original features. The entrance hall is lined in stone with arches to left and right, now infilled with doors, one of which is original. A coffered timber ceiling spans the hall. Stone stairs with stone dado and plaster groin-vaulted ceilings and stone arches lead to first-floor offices, which retain original window surrounds, doors, and skirtings. These features survive despite later partitioning of staircase areas. Attic stairs with unmoulded lattice balustrades and turned newels lead to former residential accommodation for officers; these stairs continue with steel handrails to separate street-level entrances. A war memorial inscribed "In Memory of the Men of F Division who gave their Lives 1939–1945" was relocated to its present position in 1995–6. The main entrance in the side road opens onto a double-flight staircase in a painted tile surround, with some coffering surviving at the hall top and plaster vaulting under a false ceiling. The rear interiors are not of special architectural interest. In 1994–5 a link was made through to a separate building across the access road.

The station is recognised as one of Britain's most sophisticated police station designs and as an early work by Donald McMorran, one of the most important architects to continue the classical style into the later twentieth century. Hammersmith Police Station incorporates many architectural ideas developed by McMorran in the 1950s.