Former Clerkenwell Fire Station, Clerkenwell, London

Summary

A former fire station with flats above, built 1912-1917 to the design of HFT Cooper of the Fire Brigade Branch of the London County Council Architects' Department. The detached later C20 drill tower in the yard is not included in the listing.

Description

A former fire station with flats above, built 1912-1917 to the design of HFT Cooper of the Fire Brigade Branch of the London County Council Architects' Department in a restrained Arts and Crafts style. The detached later C20 drill tower in the yard is not included in the listing.

MATERIALS: red brick laid in English bond to the main fronts, with Portland stone dressings including channelled stone rustication to the ground floor, the main modillion stone cornice above the third floor and the subsidiary cornice to the attic storey. Arts and Crafts detailing is applied, especially to keystones to the square-headed ground-floor openings and to attic and roof storeys. The rear elevation is of yellow stock brick. There are steeply pitched clay tiled roofs with tall slab chimneystacks with moulded caps, the stacks to the return are joined at 90 degrees.

PLAN: a roughly L-shaped building of four-storeys plus attic and a roof storey, comprising the main south-west frontage to Rosebery Avenue with an acute north-east return into Farringdon Road. The plan originally comprised a ground floor fire station with mess room, games room and stationmaster's room on the first floor and flats above, including a communal laundry.

EXTERIOR: the principal south-west elevation to Rosebery Avenue has six bays to the ground floor, with four appliance bays to the centre and right, and a pair of broad tri-partite windows to the left (glazing replaced) with moulded cornices and plain stone recessed panels below. The timber appliance bay doors are modern. Above, the elevation is symmetrical, of eight principal bays arranged 3-2-3, with windows grouped in triplets to the central two bays, and pairs to the outer bays, with the exception of the central first floor windows which are triple windows with lintels and relieving arches. The outer bays to either side have a full attic storey above the main cornice and roof storey above, while central bays have two storeys within the roof. There are small-pane sashes with flush frames to the outer bays, and some segmental and some square-headed sashes. The first-floor windows to the central bays have recessed stone architraves. The roof has two triple flat-topped dormers with projecting eaves and brackets to the centre block above the main cornice, while full attic storeys to either side each have a central recessed balcony with a central pier and iron railings, flanked by tripartite sash windows. There are nine tall, hipped 9-over-9 sashed dormers to the roof; those to the outer bays have balconettes with square-pattern ironwork. There is an LCC metal coat-of-arms to the first-floor centre bay with gold lettering on blue reading: 'Clerkenwell Fire Station' above the coat-of-arms and 'London County Council' below.

The shorter, asymmetrical elevation to Farringdon Road breaks forward from the return into Rosebery Avenue. There is an appliance bay to the left, and an entrance flanked by two windows (glazing replaced). The fenestration and detailing are similar to that of the outer bays of the main elevation, with eight windows to the first floor and nine to the second and third, and recessed balconies to the attic alternated with triple sashes. The three bays to the return are surmounted by a triangular gable with a window set in moulded reveals with dentilled cornice; small hexagonal oculus to apex. The balconied dormers are the same as on the front.

The rear elevation has a railed balcony to each floor and sash windows. At the southern end is an original integral six storey drill tower, square in plan with elliptical-headed openings. There is a reset foundation stone dated 1872 probably from the earlier fire station on the site.

INTERIOR: the appliance room ceiling is carried on steel girders supported on stanchions. On its northern side is a marble plaque erected in memory of the seven fire fighters from Clerkenwell Fire Station who died in service between 1871 and 1969. The main staircase has an iron balustrade. The first floor retains panelling to the former mess room and a wooden fireplace in the former station master's office. The upper floors retain some joinery, including doors, panelled dados simple wooden fireplaces and airing shelves. The top floor communal laundry retains the original horizontal sliding metal drying racks, eight rectangular china basins and seven cylindrical coppers with fire grates below. Adjoining are iron furnace doors.

History

Fire services in London emerged principally from the need for insurance providers to limit their losses through damage to property in the period after the Great Fire of 1666. Initially, each insurer maintained a separate brigade that only served subscribers until the foundation of an integrated service in 1833, funded by City businesses. In 1866, following an Act of Parliament of the previous year, the first publicly-funded authority charged with saving lives and protecting buildings from fire was founded: the Metropolitan Fire Brigade (MFB), initially part of the Metropolitan Board of Works. The earliest MFB fire stations were generally plain brick and few pre-1880 examples survive. In the 1880s, under the MFB architect Robert Pearsall, fire stations acquired a true architectural identity, most notably in the rich Gothic style typical of Victorian municipal buildings such as Bishopsgate. It was the building boom of the 1890s-1900s, however, that was to transform fire station architecture and give the Brigade some of its most characterful buildings. In 1889, the fire brigade passed to the newly-formed London County Council, and from 1896 new stations were designed by a group of architects led by Owen Fleming and Charles Canning Windmill, both formerly of the LCC Housing Department, who brought the highly-experimental methods which had evolved for designing new social housing to the Fire Brigade Division (as the department was called from 1899), and drew on a huge variety of influences to create unique and commanding stations, each built to a bespoke design and plan. This exciting period in fire station design continued to the outbreak of the First World War, although there was some standardisation of design in the period.

The first fire station was at 27 Farringdon Street, replaced on this site at the corner of Farringdon Road and Rosebery Avenue in 1871-1873, and was probably designed by Edward Cresy, architect to the MFB. By 1890, Clerkenwell had become the superintendent's station for the central district, one of the most important in London, and was extended on the south-west side in 1895-1897 in a Flemish style to the design of Robert Pearsall for the London County Council Fire Brigade Branch. This soon became inadequate, and a further extension on the south-west side was added 1912-1914 designed by HFT Cooper, retaining the 1896 extension but running an additional elongated attic storey over the top of the 1896 extension to form a single, unified design. The rebuilding was necessary to adapt the building to petrol driven vehicles, and was amongst the earliest London fire stations to adapt for this purpose. It was completed in 1917. Quarters for the superintendent were provided on the second floor, and for married men on the upper floors.

The original building housed an integral Drill Tower which remains but its use was discontinued when a free-standing drill tower was built in the yard in the latter part of the C20. The free standing tower is excluded from the listing.

The building ceased to be a fire station in 2014 and is currently (2019) up for disposal.

Reasons for Listing

The former Clerkenwell Fire Station, in Arts and Crafts Style by HFT Cooper, between 1912 and 1917, incorporating earlier fire stations of 1871-1873 by Edward Cresy and of 1895-1897 station by Robert Pearsall, is listed at Grade II* for the following principal reasons:

Architectural Interest:

* for the survival of very rare and complete communal laundry fittings, unusually located in the attic, thought to be the only such surviving nationally;
* it ranks among some of the best examples of a distinctive group of fire stations designed and built by the LCC between 1900-1914, which are widely admired as being among the most accomplished civic buildings produced by the renowned LCC Architects' Division in this rich and prolific period;
* the elevations and massing are well-composed, responding well to the prominent corner site;
* it exhibits the quality of materials and attention to detail which are the hallmarks of LCC design, and is virtually intact externally;
* it retains original internal fittings including the staircase, some fireplaces and room panelling.

Historic Interest:

* the building demonstrates the evolution of the fire brigade from the 1870s to1917, including adaptation to form the superintendent's station and additional extension to adapt the building to petrol driven vehicles.

External Links

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.