Police Court and Police Station, including forecourt walls, gates & railings

Police Court and Police Station

A substantial E-facing complex comprising a 2-storey police station with attic, a 2-storey cell block to its left (south), and a projecting single-storey court building. The ensemble is completed by forecourt walls, gates and railings.

The court building is executed in Beaux-Arts style classicism. It has an ashlar gabled front, with side walls of coursed rock-faced sandstone dressed with lighter freestone and finished with a slate roof on a moulded freestone cornice. The 3-bay front elevation is articulated by clasping buttresses containing wreaths in sunk panels beneath the cornice. The bays are framed by half-round Ionic pilasters supporting an architrave and entablature inscribed 'Police Court'. Central double panelled doors are set within an egg and dart surround topped by a bold fluted keystone. The outer bays feature blind panels. The pediment is decorated with a dentilled cornice and a garlanded wreath in relief.

The left side wall contains 4 windows: small-pane iron-framed windows set in full-height shallow projections with deep architraves incorporating aprons. The right side has one similar window, adjacent to which is a single-storey projection occupying the angle between the court and cell block, its roof concealed behind a freestone parapet. This projection has 2 iron-framed windows to the front and a doorway in an architrave on its right side wall.

The police station is a 2-storey building with attic, consisting of a symmetrical 3-bay main range with a lower gabled bay slightly set back to the left, followed by the 2-storey cell block, also set back and adjoining the court. Construction is of coursed rock-faced stone with substantial quoins and lighter freestone dressings, beneath a replaced slate roof carried on corbelled eaves (main range) and moulded eaves (cell block), which features a coped gable to the left. The main range has brick end stacks; the cell block has stone end stacks. The symmetrical bays of the main range contain replaced canted bay windows with central fielded-panel doors beneath overlights, set in stone surrounds. Upper storey windows are replaced, set in keyed freestone architraves with sill bands. Wide roof dormers in the outer bays contain 2-light windows. The gabled bay to the left has a replaced wide doorway, an added inscription panel, and in the upper storey a pair of horned sashes with 6 over single panes in a stone architrave with relieving arch. The gable is marked by a dated stone tablet.

The cell block displays a single cell window in the lower storey with iron-framed glazing behind iron bars. The 4-window upper storey is framed by a string course carrying rusticated angle pilasters, with 4-pane sash windows. The right gable end and rear are rendered but retain sash windows in the upper storey; the cell block has 4 segmental-headed cell windows on the rear, similar in form to those on the front.

The forecourt is bounded by a wall of coursed rock-faced stone with coping, which sweeps up to railings in front of the building featuring square hollow stanchions. Gateways flank the forecourt, their square freestone piers topped with deep cornices (only a single pier survives on the right side). The right gateway contains double iron gates; the left has a single iron gate.

The interior of the police court has been modernised.