Police Station

This is a late 19th-century police station, dated 1892, and now serving as a satellite police station. It was designed by the County Surveyor, possibly R.J. Thomas, and C.H. Riley, who also designed the early 20th-century office extension. The building is constructed of red brick with limestone and blue brick dressings, and has a slate half-hipped roof with brick chimneystacks, ornamental tile ridges, and finials. It is two storeys high and arranged in a roughly L-shaped plan, built in the Gothic Revival style.

The west elevation features the main range with an advanced crosswing to the right and an early 20th-century office to the left. A modern door is set within a pointed arch of red and blue brick, topped with a limestone keyblock and tympanum inscribed ‘1892 / COUNTY / POLICE / STATION’. Flanking this are a pair of sash windows with similar arched brick surrounds and tympana decorated with foliage. A buttress with stone dressings sits to one side. The windows are 9-over-1 sashes, with a continuous stone sill. Similar windows are found on the first floor, set under a hipped dormer roof. An advanced bay has a half-hipped gable and ground and first floor sashes within pointed arches. The south elevation has a central entrance under a hipped roof porch supported by curved wood brackets, flanked by sashes under pointed arches. A sash window sits above the porch. To the right is a lower range including a door and sash with brick segmental heads, a small gabled range enclosing cells, and a low blank wall with blue brick copings representing the exercise yard. The north elevation includes the office extension and a pointed arch window matching the details on the front. The building extends down the hill to a cell range and wall of the exercise yard, with a later 20th-century garage addition.

The original interior plan remains, with offices and a charge room at the front, a kitchen and parlour to the right, and cells at the rear of the building. A staircase descends to the cell area, which has a red and black tiled floor and is lit by a barred clerestory window overlooking an internal courtyard. The cells have thick brick walls, steel bolted doors, and barred windows to the exercise yard. Stone steps lead to an exterior exercise yard. Other features include built-in cupboards, 4-panel doors, two staircases to upper rooms each with a small fireplace and metal grate.

A brick gate pier is attached to the office extension, along with a matching pier attached to a brick boundary wall with blue brick copings and plinth. Gates attached to the piers form the boundary to the front of the station and to the exercise yard and garaging at the rear.

The police station was built to replace the 18th-century Old Gaol which no longer met the county's requirements.