New Cross Fire Station

New Cross Fire Station

This fire station is an L-shaped building of red and stock brick with Portland stone dressings and clay tile roofs, built in the baronial or château style.

The main block faces Queen's Road with four storeys, while a three-storey range extends at right-angles into Waller Road. The main stairwell and observation tower occupy the angle between the two sections. At ground level, the engine room sits centrally in the main block, with the watch room to the west and former recreation and mess rooms (now offices) to the east. A single-storey rear projection, now part of the engine room, was originally the stables, with a flat roof probably used for drying clothes. The first floor originally housed the foreman's and superintendent's quarters; the present arrangement with a central corridor serving the mess room, kitchen, WCs and sleeping cubicles for on-duty firemen dates from 1912 alterations. The second and third floors contain a series of flats for married officers, each originally comprising a kitchen, scullery and single bedroom with shared WCs and spare rooms opening from the rear corridor. The Waller Road range originally contained coachmen's quarters and a dormitory for unmarried officers on the ground floor, with corridor-access flats above and WCs in projecting blocks to the rear; the present arrangement with two self-contained houses at the northern end dates from 1912.

The symmetrical Queen's Road block features six unequal bays framed by large cylindrical corner tourelles, corbelled out at the base and topped by tall conical roofs, the right-hand one retaining its elaborate wrought-iron finial. Windows are timber sashes with stone cills, lintels, transoms and half-mullions. The two original appliance bays had segmental heads and were divided by stepped and gabled buttresses, one of which survives. The three present bays with concrete piers and fascia inscribed 'LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL / NEW CROSS FIRE STATION' date from 1958. Lettering above the first-floor windows reads 'LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL'. A heavy moulded cornice spans the full width of the façade at second-floor level, with third-floor windows above rising into gabled half-dormers. The main roof is hipped with very tall and broad ridged stacks. A Gothic trefoil-headed plaque bearing the date 1894 sits on the short return to Waller Road.

The Waller Road range comprises two sections: the taller right-hand part has twin gables and ridged stacks, while the left-hand part, raised to its present height in 1912, has hipped half-dormers. The three ground-floor doorways date from the 1912 remodelling, when part of this range was converted into houses for the superintendent and foreman. The observation tower rises in the angle between the two ranges, square at the base but becoming octagonal and then cylindrical through a series of angled off-sets. The observation chamber itself sits in a glazed timber cupola with miniature crenellations and a conical roof.

Interiors have been much altered, making it difficult to distinguish original features from those belonging to the 1912 and later remodellings. The engine room is spanned by metal girders supported on moulded stanchion columns. The main stair has a simple metal balustrade with twisted uprights. The upper two floors, originally married officers' flats, retain doors, cupboards, lobby screens, fireplaces and other fittings relatively unchanged. A sliding pole, installed in 1912, is set in a glazed timber enclosure with double doors on each level.

Twin gate-piers with octagonal stone caps flank the entrance to the yard from Queens Road; the original gates have been replaced. The area in front of the Waller Road range and around the corner in Queens Road is marked by a run of spiked wrought-iron railings.