Former Bow Street Magistrates Court and Police Station

Former Bow Street Magistrates Court and Police Station

A former court and police station built in 1879-80 by Sir John Taylor of the Office of Works. The building displays a dignified, eclectic Graeco-Roman style with some slightly Vanbrughian details, executed rather in the manner of Pennethorne.

The structure is constructed in Portland stone with a slate roof; the Broad Court front is faced in white Suffolk brick with Portland stone dressings. Cast iron area railings and lamps complete the external ironwork.

The building is a free-standing quadrangular block of three storeys with a basement and attic storey. The main composition consists of a five-bay centrepiece eight windows wide, arranged as a five-window centrepiece with advanced flanking entrance-pavilion bays, three-window wings on either side, a splayed one-window corner, and an eight-window return to Broad Court.

The ground floor is channelled, with van and police station entrances positioned in the centrepiece pavilions. The police station entrance to the right features a flight of steps and a stone architrave doorway with a segmental pediment on consoles projecting above the ground floor cornice. The van entrance is plain, set beneath a segmental arch. Both entrances and the central ground floor windows are framed by deeply channelled piers, which rise as quoin piers on the pavilions and are repeated as broader terminal piers at the wings.

The first floor contains recessed sash windows set in architraves with segmental pediments on consoles; those in the pavilions have triangular pediments instead. Second floor windows have eared architraves, as does the centrepiece attic. The three central bays between the pavilions feature an engaged giant Corinthian order applied to the first and second floors, with panelled piers in the attic. This order is repeated on the pavilion attics. Pseudo-pedestals line the ground and first floors, with apron panels to the wings; these become a fully expressed balustraded balcony across the three central bays. The second floor sill course runs continuously over quoin and terminal piers. A bed mould sits beneath the frieze, and a bold main cornice crowns the second floor, broken forward over piers and the giant order. Balustraded parapets sit above the wings, and Vanbrughian belvedere features rise over the terminal piers. Similar cornicing handles the centrepiece attic, complete with acroteria and miniature belvedere features above the quoin piers of the pavilions, with balustraded parapets and projecting dies. Chimney stacks are corniced throughout.

The splayed corner is treated consistently and contains the Court entrance, which features a straight entablature instead of a segmental pediment but otherwise matches the police station doorway in detail. A tripartite first floor window is set within an arched recess with the Royal Arms displayed in the tympanum.

Sturdy cast iron area railings with stone pedestal-parapets bridge the area flanking the three entrances, surmounted by cast iron lamps with crowned globe lanterns.

The building holds historical significance as the venue for some of the most prominent suffragette trials in the decade before the First World War. The Women's Social and Political Union, founded in Manchester by Emmeline Pankhurst in 1903, adopted militant direct action tactics that frequently resulted in arrests. Most offences were minor and tried in London's magistrates' courts, including Bow Street. In 1908, following a WSPU leaflet urging supporters to "help the suffragettes to rush the House of Commons" on 13 October, leaders Emmeline Pankhurst, Christabel Pankhurst and Flora Drummond were arrested and tried at Bow Street. Though women were barred from practising law at the time, prisoners could conduct their own defence. Christabel Pankhurst, who held a law degree, became the first qualified woman to cross-examine witnesses in a court. A press photographer associated with the Union captured covert photographs of the trial showing the three defendants in the dock.