Northampton Fire Station with Minster House above, Northampton, West Northamptonshire

Summary

Fire station with accommodation above built in 1934-35 by Ernest Prestwich of J.C. Prestwich & Sons of Leigh, Lancashire. The contractors were Messrs. Henry Martin Ltd. of Northampton and many national and local firms were sub-contractors.

Description

MATERIALS: the ground and mezzanine floors have a steel frame but all upper floors are of conventional brick construction. The brick is brown Phorpres rustic, a type of Fletton brick, and the south front and east and west returns are clad with coursed Monk's Park Bath stone under a flat asphalt roof.

PLAN: the ground plan consists of a large central appliance house for the engines, a repair workshop east of that, and to the west the control room and the chief fire officer's office is located in the south-west corner of the building. The rear has at each end a projecting rectangular staircase tower rising above the flat parapeted roof. A mezzanine floor at the west end contains the duty room overlooking the appliance house and the first floor has sixteen single bedrooms for unmarried officers, with a dining room and kitchen towards the east end. At the rear is a full-width balcony with two pole shutes. The three upper floors have twenty-one three-bedroom flats for married men, two of which are larger and intended for senior officers, with sliding poles within the staircase towers at each end. In addition are laundry rooms on the second and fourth floors. Behind the main block is a parade ground with a hose tower at its centre.

EXTERIOR: the south elevation towards Upper Mounts is a monolithic and symmetrical six-storey block of sixteen window-bays faced in coursed Bath stone under a flat asphalted roof. In the centre of the ground floor are six appliance doors extending through the ground and mezzanine floors, the western five of which are modern steel roller doors, but the eastern one is a fixed glazed timber door which leads to the workshop bay, and over each are timber four-light transom lights. Over the doors is a projecting stone balcony bearing the words NORTHAMPTON FIRE STATION in a raised field which includes the Northampton coat of arms in the centre The balcony parapet is a cast-lead flower trough decorated with raised bosses. There are two prominent water hoppers under the balcony, with downpipes, and the hoppers are stamped AD/1935. To the left of the appliance house doors is a glazed pedestrian doorway with margin lights within a triple-stepped surround leading to a small enquiry office, and this is flanked by one small steel casement with two-by-four panes and is surmounted by a double keystone. The upper floors are uniformly lit through four-light steel casement windows with opening side leafs and top-hung openers over transom bars. They were manufactured by Henry Hope & Sons Ltd of New York. These are all set within plain reveals without architraves, but the top-floor windows are in a continuous frieze of raised square panels within square fields, and this continues into the east and west returns. There is a plain parapet and the roof has three chimneystacks.

The east and west returns have three identical steel casements to each floor and both have a taller north staircase projection with a timber door opening into the ground floor, within a double-stepped reveal. The east return has one two-light casement to each floor above and an additional double-timber door in the main block leading to the workshop bay, and there is a basement protected by wrought-iron area railings.

The rear (north) elevation is of stretcher bond Phorpres Fletton brick made by the London Brick Company, with on the ground floor seven late C20 steel appliance doorways opening onto the parade ground under a Bath stone lintel. Doors four to six (from the left) are side-hung steel doors and the remainder are top-roller doors, and over the side-hung examples is a canopy consisting of three hipped glazed sections supported by a steel frame. This is where the appliances are cleaned. To the west of the doors is a two-storey bay with two steel casements to each floor under gauged skewback arches, and to the outside corners of the elevation are the two main staircase towers, with Bath stone quoins. Each floor of the west tower is lit through a six-by-four paned top-hung casement under gauged skewback arches, but the east tower has a 1960s additional bay applied to the north side containing a sliding pole and lit through a single one-light casement under the top parapet, required when the upper three storeys of flats became used for general public accommodation rather than for exclusive fire-station use. This alteration also required the insertion of two-light steel casements to the west face of the upper four floors under concrete lintels. Both towers are finished with Bath stone parapets. Between the terminating staircase towers are four storeys of deck-access flats, although the first floor, immediately over the appliance doors, serves the unmarried officers' quarters. The three floors above have glazed steel screens of the 1960s and there are two square-section sliding pole towers projecting from the access decks and lit through one two-by-four paned steel casement to each of the four floors, under gauged skewback arches.

INTERIOR: the pedestrian entrance door leads to a small public enquiry area separated from the control room to its north by a glazed timber screen and giving access to the control room via a glazed timber door with margin lights, and a second doorway, temporarily without its door, opens into the engine house under a plain rectangular overlight. The control room is a plain rectangular space with a small office in the south-west corner, all with woodblock flooring, and a rolled steel joist runs north-south in the ceiling. To the west are the three steel casements noted from the exterior, and to the east is a five-light steel casement looking into the appliance house, and there is a glazed door to its left with margin glazing and a plain rectangular overlight. A second such timber door and overlight leads north into the ground floor of the west staircase. Both the west and east open-well staircases have cantilevered concrete treads with an open string and a steel balustrade consisting of rectangular balusters to every fourth tread and four flat rails, bolted on under the moulded and swept timber handrail. A second doorway, without its door, leads into the appliance house to the south of a three-light steel casement.

The main appliance house is a single large open space through two storeys with a line of four encased steel piers running east-west supporting steel bridging beams running north-south. The floor is tiled throughout and there are five opposing roller doors to the north and south. The west wall has doorways and internal windows to the staircase, control room and enquiry office, already described, and over the south half of the wall, that is directly above the control room and enquiry lobby, is the duty room in the mezzanine floor (now used as a games room for the staff) looking into the appliance house through four lights of steel casements either side of double timber half-glazed doors which allowed access to the sliding pole. This pole has been removed. A brick wall towards the east end divides the space from the former repair shop, now used as a locker room, which has a single fixed timber glazed screen to the street and two late C20 steel roller doors to the north.

The first floor has exposed brick walls and the duty room opens off a staircase landing, next to a toilet. It is a plain room with a flat plastered ceiling and roll-topped skirting and the door into it has a single large panel. The staircase continues to the first floor where a timber door with a glazed panel leads to the rear balcony which is wider than the access decks to the floors above, and has a 1970s steel and glass canopy. Several timber doors and four-light steel windows pierce the south wall, and the open north side is dominated by the two square external pole towers with double-leaf timber doors. The interior of this floor has a long central corridor running west-east beginning at the west under a semi-circular arch and terminating towards the east with a glazed door with margin lights, and off it are sixteen single sleeping cells originally for the unmarried operational staff, each with a built-in timber cupboard. There are eight of these cells on each side, all entered through timber doors with a single large fielded panel. The corridor leads to a spacious firemen's dining room and sitting room combined, heated from a tiled fire surround set into the east wall within an oak chimneypiece with interlocking rectangular forms, woodblock floor, flat plastered ceiling and no further details. A double-leaf timber door at the north end of the west wall opens directly to a pole chute which formerly descended directly into the appliance house below. Leading off the sitting room and occupying the end bay of the building and looking out over the west return is the staff kitchen, which has a suspended ceiling and early C21 stainless steel fittings. A fire escape door leads north into the east staircase.

The upper three floors have seven self-contained flats to the second floor, eight to the third floor and six to the top floor.

SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: the hose tower is a free-standing structure in the parade ground 19.8m high in the form of a battered square-section tower of English-bond Phorpres brick over a flush plinth of engineering brick. There is a narrow band of Bath stone at a low level and another under the Bath stone parapet. The south side is entered through a double-leaf timber arched door, set in a single rebate, and above this is one two-light steel casement to each of the four apparent floors, and a single-light steel casement lights the base on the east side. The interior has no floors, but a narrow winder staircase and pulleys and ropes for hanging fibre and rubber hoses for drying.

History

In 1930 proposals for a new civic centre in Northampton were underway, and included a fire station with accommodation, public baths, and a police station incorporating a sessions (now magistrates') court. They were to be constructed on a redeveloped site between Earl Street in the east and Bailiff Street to the west, on the north side of Upper Mounts. The bulk of the site had been taken up by Northampton Prison, built in 1846 and closed in 1922. The design for the civic centre was awarded following an architectural competition in 1931. This was won by Ernest Prestwich of J.C. Prestwich & Sons, Leigh, Lancashire, and the building contract was awarded to Henry Martin Ltd. of Northampton.

The Fire Station included an accommodation floor with a sitting room and kitchen for single firemen and three upper floors of three-bedroom flats for married officers. It was opened on 30 July 1935, four months after the foundations of the adjacent (Grade II listed, NHLE 1410055) Mount Baths were dug, and four years before the Police Station was begun. The former fire station in Dychurch Lane had all but ceased functioning in the early 1930s, and the town population was expanding, which explains why its replacement was the first of the three new buildings to be commenced.

The building predates the former headquarters of the London Fire Brigade on the Albert Embankment in London (Grade II, 1392337). However, the two buildings share some key characteristics as 'super stations', constructed in the early C20 with pared down, moderne detail that appeared to be progressive and technologically advanced, in comparison with the highly decorative stations of an earlier generation.

Ernest Prestwich entered into an unofficial collaboration with W.J. Bassett-Lowke, a wealthy Northampton businessman who commissioned Rennie Mackintosh to redesign his house at 78 Derngate in the town in 1916-17 (Grade II*, 1040369) and Peter Behrens to design New Ways, his new house on Wellingborough Road in 1925-26, a very early example of German Expressionism in England (Grade II*, 1052387). He was a member of the Design and Industries Association and is considered to be one of the most important promoters of Modernism in the country, and as chairman of the committee overseeing the new civic centre was well placed to influence the design. In the 1930s he worked on major civic centres in Rugby, Portsmouth and Swansea.

The fire station's flat roof provided a high vantage point over the town which was used by Air Raid Precaution wardens during the Second World War, for which a small hut was constructed on top of the eastern stair tower.

The building remained the headquarters of the Northampton Fire Brigade until 1976, at which time the organisation merged with the Northamptonshire Fire Brigade. It is today part of the Northamptonshire Fire and Rescue Service.

In 1994 the upper three floors of self-contained flats were leased by the Minster Housing Association and are used for general public accommodation, a change which first took place in the late 1960s.

Reasons for Listing

Northampton Fire Station, Upper Mounts, Northampton is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:

* it was designed by an established regional architect and is of equal quality and stature to major listed fire stations of the 1930s;

* it is a good example of a ‘super station’ providing a imposing brigade headquarters;

* it is little altered and has an intact and model plan-form.

Historic interest:

* it is associated with W J Bassett-Lowke, chairman of the committee overseeing the new civic centre in Northampton, who is considered to be one of the most important promoters of Modernism in the country.

Group value:

* It has very strong group value with the adjoining Grade II listed swimming baths as part of a cohesive planned civic complex.

External Links

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