Pangbourne Police Station, erected in 1911 and designed by architect, J F Hawkins, County Surveyor, Berkshire County Council. The building played an important part of the expansion of the Berkshire Constabulary in 1910, paired with a similar Station at Didcot. Both were designed by a John F Hawkins, but only Pangbourne has survived as the Didcot Station has now been replaced.
Extended to the rear in the late 1930’s to form ancillary accommodation including additional police offices, 2 cells, recreation room and single police accommodation on first floor. Further alterations in 1962, including internal reconfigurations and the erection of two Police houses on land at the rear of the Police Station, currently in use by the Police Superintendent’s Association of England and Wales.
This 1911 building was designed to provide on the ground and first floors Constables Quarters at the west end and Sergeants Quarters at the east, each with a separate front door and lobby either side of the gabled projection. The main entrance to the Police Station on the ground floor leads to a Vestibule, Charge Room, and Corridor, and a Cell in a central, single-storey rear extension with an exercising yard, cycle shed and WC The cell, yard, shed and WC were replaced in 1936 when the rear extension was added.
The walls are of English Garden Wall Bond with a string course between the floors, strongly-accented blue brick quoins on the 4 corners of the building and the 2 corners of the gabled projection, and built on a champfered plinth. The windows, front and rear, are all sash windows, each with a flat arch and decorative brickwork cill, with a single, projecting brick column between each pair of the front windows.
The entrance to the Police Station is by double wooden doors, pilasters and architrave of moulded concrete blocks with the name in stone, POLICE STATION, beneath a composite canopy of blue bricks and concrete blocks jutting over, and an illuminated glass blue lamp above. Front doors to the Constables’ and Sergeants’ Quarters, are each side of the projecting gables, each with a fanlight with art nouveau glazing bars, glass upper panels, and wooden lower panels.
The roof is half-hipped with 2 front gables, finished with tiles and an angular ridge. Each gable is decorated with 3 diagonal blocks of bricks, a central block and 2 smaller ones. The chimneys are 4 narrow stacks, brick built, 1 at each end wall, and 2 in the centre, above the gables, each topped with 4 courses of bricks enclosing chimney pots above a peculiar coping feature of bricks and concrete blocks. The 2 end-wall stacks are decorated with a single, similar block of bricks.
The original Police Station, designed in 1911, is a characteristic building of its period, sufficiently so to be mentioned in Pevsner’s Berkshire as being “a handsome neo-Georgian building”, in good condition and still open until very recently when it was permanently closed to the public, though still in continuing use by Thames Valley Police.
The building is a significant element in the street scene. Originally it stood as an important landmark on the entry to Pangbourne from Reading. Despite further building along Reading Road since 1911, it remains a prominent building. The view of the exterior of the original building from the main road remains virtually unchanged since 1911.
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