Woolston Signal Box

MATERIALS: red brick in Flemish bond. Hipped slate roof with overhanging eaves and timber verge boards. Timber stairs and landing.

PLAN: rectangular-plan, two-storey structure with lower storey forming a semi-basement.

EXTERIOR: two-storey structure has a broad brick panel dividing the glazing on the front elevation, with a pair of windows to either side, with distinctive four-pane timber side opening Yorkshire sashes with curved framing at the head. Each end wall also has a pair of four-pane Yorkshire sashes. The windows are mounted in timber frames that rest on projecting painted stone window cills, which wrap around the north-west and north-east corners. The window frames have transoms with rectangular toplights (now painted over). The two flat-arched locking-room window positions in the main elevation (north wall) have been bricked up. An original painted timber name board with the word ‘Woolston’ in relief is mounted on the central brick panel below the cill line. The lower storey containing the locking room is sunken into the depth of the platform and is accessed down a flight of five brick steps with chequered blue tile treads leading to a doorway in the west elevation. The operations room is reached by a centrally set, short flight of timber steps that rise from the platform to a timber landing, supported on four timber struts in the west elevation. Timber posts supporting inclined handrails and single side rails protect the steps and the landing has handrails supported by posts and cruciform rails. A timber panelled open porch with a mono-pitch roof occupies the southern half of the landing and protects the operations room door from the weather. A secondary timber frame clad in painted corrugated sheeting extends out from the porch and protects the steps to the locking room from the weather. A secondary lean-to signalman’s closet is built against the south elevation. The hipped slate-clad roof has dark grey ridge tiles, and a conical galvanised steel ventilator is set in the southern slope. The roof projects beyond the face of the structure to form eaves with sloped timber soffits and cast-iron rainwater goods mounted on verge boards.

INTERIOR: the operations room is entered from the porch through a four-panel door at the southern end of the west elevation; it is likely that the top two panels were originally glazed. The room is empty, the brickwork of the north, west and east walls has been painted and the southern wall has a timber lining. The soffit of the hipped roof is clad in timber-painted boards and the tie-beams of the two roof trusses are exposed. The locking room is entered by a framed ledged and braced door and is devoid of any fittings. A blocked rectangular recess at floor level in the north wall indicates where the point rods and signal cables passed out of the locking room. The ends of the three cantilevered timber beams that support the landing pass through the west wall and project into the room.