Police Station, including forecourt railings

This is a detached, three-storey police station, originally built as a grand house, dating from the late 18th century. The building is constructed of brown brick in a Flemish bond pattern, with rusticated stone quoins (now painted), a slate roof, and a heavy wooden cornice to the front facade. Brick stacks rise centrally. The facade is four bays wide, designed with a main three-bay symmetrical section and a narrower, recessed bay to the right, which may have originally been a wig-closet. A wooden Tuscan porch with an entablature featuring triglyphs on unfluted columns provides the central entrance; it has a flat, parapetted roof with central and corner piers. The original six-panel front door now has modern glazing to the upper four panels and a three-pane rectangular overlight. The central bay on the first and second floors has original twelve-pane and six-pane sash windows respectively. The outer bays on the ground floor have Venetian-style windows, with twelve-pane central sections featuring arched and intersecting heads. The first-floor windows in the outer bays are similarly designed tripartite windows with segmental heads, and the upper-floor windows have Diocletian-type windows with intersecting upper central lights and an identical design. Projecting stone sills are present throughout. All windows appear to be the original, unhorned sashes. The recessed right-hand bay features narrow eight-pane sash windows with segmental heads and projecting sills to each floor, with rendered gable ends. The rear of the main block exhibits asymmetrical fenestration, including five nine-pane, cambered sashes, a twelve-pane stair light with a modern entrance door below, two small four-pane sashes, and a six-pane casement. Later extensions form an L-shape at the rear, connecting to the main block. An early 19th-century two-storey range is faced with rough-dressed limestone and has a tripartite first-floor sash with a cambered head, along with a series of later 19th or early 20th-century cell windows. A lower brick extension adjoining this range has further cell windows and a boarded entrance with a cambered head. Plain, contemporary forecourt railings with spike finials and urns over stanchions stand in front of the building. A ground-floor room on the right-hand side (now a Reception area) retains a moulded plaster cornice with egg-and-dart and reel decoration, with similar plasterwork to the ceiling margins. Original features include a lugged wooden moulded architrave and a ribbed, panelled door, though the upper section of the door now has a modern glazed insert panel. The ground floor is extensively subdivided with modern partitioning. The staircase to the upper floors remains largely original, although it has been simplified and fitted with a new oak rail in the early 20th century. The staircase also features a swept rail, oak stick balusters, oak treads and risers, and pierced decoration to the tread ends. A moulded cornice is present in the stairwell ceiling and in the principal first-floor rooms, along with simple moulded architraves. The fireplaces are generally blocked up, and the doors are modern fire door replacements.