Fire Station And Engine House With Stalk And Gate Piers, Buxley, Manderston House

The fire station and engine house at Buxley, Manderston House, designed by John Kinross in 1897, is a Scottish Baronial structure. It consists of an engine/power house and a fire station arranged at right angles, located to the north of the main steading. The building features rake jointed rubble with ashlar dressings and roll-moulded surrounds.

The engine house is a 3 by 3-bay block. Its eastern elevation has three large windows, with the center and right windows set under a crowstepped gable. The center window features an open semicircular pediment, while the left window is set into a jettied wall plane on a corbel course. The northern elevation includes a door on the outer right and three grilles at the wallhead. The fire station is attached to the right of the engine house and has a square section with a decorative timber lantern-ventilator at the ridge. This ventilator is divided by pilasters and flanked by two round-headed louvred openings on each face, topped with an ogeed slate roof and a leaded ball finial.

The stalk is a tapering, polygonal yellow brick structure with a cornice and coping, set on a tall pedestal made of ashlar and brick, located at the southeast of the power house.

The fire station's principal elevation faces west and features a gable on the outer left. It has a large, off-center two-leaf doorway with a broken segmental pediment that cradles an oval window. There is a blank bay to the left of center and two large square machinery doorways in the center and right, each adorned with a fleur-de-lys carved panel at the center of the lintel. The doors are boarded, with the left door being part-glazed for pedestrian access. A window is located on the outer right, set under a wallhead that steps up in ashlar to the main steading.

The northern elevation of the fire station has three high-set windows in high-relief surrounds, breaking the eaves with curvilinear dormerheads, each featuring a carved fleuron in the dormerhead. The windows are small-pane sash and case style. The roof is covered with graded grey/green slates, and the building has ashlar ridges and crowstepped gables.

Inside the fire station, the walls are lined with enamel glazed bricks up to wainscot height, topped with a cornice. The wallhead cornice is decorated with floreate plaster squares, and there is a contemporary brass lantern. The interior of the power station features a marble floor and was used for recreation after 1934.

The gatepiers to the east are made of ashlar sandstone, corniced, and topped with substantial ashlar pyramids on ball feet. Nearby, there are pal stones.