Police Station

Police Station, 29-33 Market Street

Built in 1910 by John Dixon Butler, FRIBA, Architect and Surveyor to the Metropolitan Police, this police station exemplifies the restrained Queen Anne style of Edwardian civic architecture. The building is constructed in red brick with ashlar dressings, featuring slate mansard and pitched roofs. The timber sash windows with horns were refurbished in the early 21st century. The building has undergone internal modernisation during the late 20th century, but retains significant original features.

The frontage to Market Street is wide and largely symmetrical, comprising sixteen window bays organised into five parts. Steep gables with stone copings mark the end and central sections, between which run second-floor dropped slated mansard roofs over dentillated cornices. The ground floor is defined by a deep ashlar band. The pedestrian entrance, positioned to the right-hand side, is an advanced ashlar entrance with the word "police" inscribed in the frieze below a prominent cornice. To its right stands an ashlar canted bay. A pair of panelled hardwood front doors are set within a stone architrave carrying the 1910 date. The carriage entrance to the left side, along with the ground-floor tripartite windows, sits beneath inset segmental arches. The carriage entrance is lined with glazed bricks—white above a brown dado. First-floor windows feature exaggerated slender stone keyblocks.

The rear elevation displays an irregular window arrangement beneath gauged brick arches, with a single-storey flat-roofed extension. A projecting cell block wing extends to the rear, built in gauged red brick with arched openings over sash windows. Seven small cell windows, positioned high on the wall and fitted with small-pane iron frames, feature chamfered stone heads and stone cills; one has been replaced with a taller window. A boundary wall to the yard survives in part, though former stable buildings to the rear have been substantially rebuilt.

The entrance hall and offices were modernised in the late 20th century with new partitions and fittings. The entrance hall rises full height with metal balusters. Arched openings appear in the corridors. The interior of the rear wing preserves the original cells, featuring thick metal cell doors with large locks and sliding windows. The systems for secure operation of light and toilet flush remain in place.

John Dixon Butler succeeded his father, John Butler, as Architect and Surveyor to the Metropolitan Police in 1895 and served in this post until his death in 1920, during which time he designed over 200 police stations and courts.

Iron railings surround the front area and frame two sets of steps. A police lantern with blue glass sits on a chamfered stone plinth to the left of the steps.

The building possesses strong group value with the adjacent listed cottages on Market Street, and with the listed Town Hall of 1903-6 and the 1912 Magistrates Court, both also by Dixon Butler, which it directly faces. These buildings together reflect the civic aspirations of Woolwich Metropolitan Borough, created in 1899, which commissioned several new buildings during this period to assert the new borough's status and pride.