Haslemere Signal Box

Haslemere Signal Box

This is a London & South Western Railway Type 4 signal box, built in 1895. The building is constructed of red brick laid in English bond, with a hipped Welsh slate roof featuring overhanging eaves and timber verge boards. It has a rectangular plan and rises two storeys, with the lower storey forming a semi-basement.

The front elevation is divided by a broad brick panel, with three four-light uPVC windows to either side set into original timber frames. Each end wall carries a pair of four-pane uPVC windows mounted in timber frames that rest on projecting painted stone window cills, wrapping around the north and west corners. The window frames include transomes with rectangular glazed toplights, now painted over. Two original timber three-pane locking room casement windows sit beneath segmental brick arches in the north-west wall. A modern navy blue name board reading 'Haslemere' in white lettering is mounted on the central brick panel below the cill line. The rear southern corner of the south-east and south-west elevations rises to full two-storey height where a disused railway bay survives.

The lower storey, containing the locking room, is sunken into the depth of the platform and is accessed down five brick steps to a doorway in the north-east elevation. The operations room is reached by a centrally positioned short flight of timber steps rising from the platform to a timber landing. The landing is supported on two strutted cantilevered beams and two brick carrier walls built against the north-east elevation. Timber posts with inclined handrails protect the steps, while the landing itself has handrails supported by posts with cruciform rails. A timber weatherboard porch with a signalman's closet beneath a catslipe roof occupies the southern half of the landing, protecting the operations room door from weather. The porch is accessed by an external uPVC door with two glazed panels. The hipped Welsh slate roof has red ridge tiles and a projecting ventilator flue in the southern slope, with eaves formed by the roof projecting beyond the structure's face, featuring sloped timber soffits and cast-iron rainwater goods mounted on verge boards. The catslipe roof over the porch is supported at its northern corner on a timber post that also supports a handrail for the flight of steps.

The operations room is entered from the porch through a uPVC three-panel door with glazed upper panels at the southern end of the north-east elevation. It is equipped with a forty-seven lever Stevens (Railway Signalling Co) frame beneath a blockshelf holding 'up' and 'down' block instruments, and a 1980s period track circuit diagram. Modern equipment includes a computer display on a desk in the southern corner. Signal cable tensioning wheels are located against the front wall, and a suspended ceiling has been inserted. The interior brick walls have been painted and an original two-door wooden cupboard is attached to the rear wall. The locking room is entered through a framed ledged and braced timber door beneath a flat brick arch and houses a mechanical locking-frame carried on a timber beam running the full length of the room. Modern electrical equipment is attached to the rear and south-west walls. The cut-off ends of the cantilevered timber beams supporting the landing pass through the north-east wall and project into the room.

The building has undergone modern alterations and additions; those of post-1980s vintage are not of special interest. Timber stairs and landing are part of the original structure.