Camberwell Police Station And Attached Lamp Bracket

This is a Metropolitan police station, built in 1898 to designs by John Dixon Butler. It is constructed of red brick in Flemish bond, with stone dressings and a dark red brick plinth to the ground floor, and has a tile roof. The building is an example of the Arts and Crafts Free Style.

The building is two storeys, stepping up to three over a basement, with a six-window front. Most windows are flat-arched, with original sashes and doors. The elevation is deliberately asymmetrical. The main entrance is slightly left of centre, positioned within an aedicule featuring quoined jambs topped by scroll brackets that support a semicircular pediment, which sits on a short cornice. The ground floor is banded with brick and stone. A single window is to the left of the entrance, and to the right is a triple transomed window, treated as a shallow segmental bay, with stone mullions dividing each light, all set within an elliptical-arched recess with a scalloped chamfer and a banded design. The keystone is treated as a scroll pediment intersecting the sill band of the first-floor windows. The design finishes with a low wing of two windows, featuring a parapet. The right-hand ranges rise to a second storey, which terminates in a facing gable. The left return of this gable repeats materials and effects seen on the main elevation. Closely paired windows are found in the gable facing range, each with eared and shouldered architraves. A sill band links the heads and lintels of the second-floor windows. The gable is pierced by a tall, narrow slit window, stopping just below the stone peak, and the gable coping is moulded. Moulded stacks are visible on the party walls and where the gable-facing roof meets the rear. A metal floral bracket, supporting a Windsor-style lamp with a crown top, projects from the tympanum above the entrance. Rainwater heads at the party walls bear the date "1898" in Gothic script. The door jamb has the initials "MP" and the date. The interior was not inspected.