The Old Police Station

The Old Police Station is a Grade II listed building designed in a Muscular Gothic style. It features an L-plan layout with two and three storeys, including attics, and serves as a combination of a police station, superintendent’s house, and magistrate’s court. The structure is built from bull-nosed rubble local stone with red sandstone dressings, which include a cill band and gable parapets. It has steeply pitched slate roofs and grouped octagonal blue brick chimney stacks. The glazing consists mainly of paired cusped lancets on the first and second floors, cross-frame windows on the ground floor with voussoirs, and narrow blocked openings in the attic.

The building has an asymmetrical facade facing Court Road, featuring advanced gable-ended outer bays that flank a set-back court with a tall roof and swept-out eaves. The grouped lancets are adorned with banded voussoirs and filleted nook shafts. There are raised entrances on either side, each with lean-to porches. The right end has a splayed corner with a porch leading to the former superintendent’s house, which includes a quatrefoil glazed head above a boarded door. The rear of the building has grouped lancets facing across Court Road. The southwest corner projects and features a polygonal stone roof with a battlemented parapet, leading to the four-gabled elevation on Derwen Road. This elevation includes two narrow entrances, one of which retains a bracketed hood, along with a splayed bay and an advanced double doorway at the left end, which has a hoodmould with judge and policeman head stops.

Inside, the building retains an open timber roof in the hall of Justice, featuring cusped windbraces and quatrefoil panels. Several heavily quatrefoil punched doors, characteristic of the architect Prichard, are also present.