Details
HENDON
31/0/10474 THE BURROUGHS
03-APR-02 91
Hendon Fire Station
(Formerly listed as:
THE BURROUGHS
HENDON FIRE STATION)
GV II
Fire station. 1911 by Herbert Welch for the Urban Council of Hendon. Red brick in English Bond and Portland Stone dressings. Slate hipped roofs and tall red brick chimneystacks. Late-C20 replacement windows in original openings. 3 storeys in a free Arts and Crafts style with Renaissance influence. L-shaped plan.
EXTERIOR: Street frontage of four bays, symmetrical above ground floor. Ground floor faced in stone, upper floors mainly brick, save for the oriels. Three segmental-headed engine door openings aligned to right of ground floor; a pair of narrow windows to the left-hand bay. Narrow plat band with adjoining keystones over engine openings. Above, projecting two-storey canted oriels to outer bays, carried on small consoles, and with mullioned windows; inner two bays with 6-light mullioned windows to each floor. Stone cartouche to centre with relief of the lamb and flag. Balustraded parapet above cornice with tall chimneystack to centre. SOUTH elevation features nearly central red brick tower, slightly advanced, and rising with paired louvres to each face, shallow pilasters and crenellated top; cornice and balustrade continue to this elevation with a pair of tall panelled chimneys flanking the tower. Upper windows are six-light, with nine-lights indicating the billiard room, and all replaced. Ground floor, of stone like the facade, has narrow triple windows set beneath scored voussoirs with ventilation grilles over; door to right of centre. REAR elevation has 3-storey return for two bays with stone cornice, but here the ground floor is red brick, not stone, and with three doors. 9-light windows at first floor billiard room as at south elevation. To left of this, the building is set back to form the 'washing yard', covered by a part glass sloping roof as original, this linking the south wing and a red brick wall with glazed brick dado that encloses the yard to the north. The rear of the main wing has a short return to the far left with stone cornice and a single-bay, two-storey projecting room; to the centre, the first and second storey balconies, formerly open, are now enclosed by late-C20 windows. Free-standing late-C20 practice tower in yard not of special interest.
INTERIOR: The plan form is largely unaltered, except for rearrangement of partitions in the accommodation wing to the north. Features that contribute to the special interest include: the full-height green glazed bricks that line the engine room and the ground floor of the stairwell; original open-well staircase that rises to the tower with iron balusters, these heightened with an extended metal grille; the billiard room, an important feature of fire stations of this period, retains a heavy cornice befitting the grandeur of this room but has lost the fireplace. A small amount of original joinery survives, such as a cupboard in the first floor mess (formerly a dormitory); two-storey sliding pole. Formerly open balcony linking accommodation wing at first and second floor is now enclosed.
HISTORY: A fire brigade was formed in Hendon in 1855 and refounded as a volunteer brigade in 1866, with subsidiary stations in Mill Hill and Childs Hill. In 1899, Hendon Urban District Council took over the brigade and opened sub-stations at Burnt Oak, West Hendon and Golders Green the following year. The engine had been kept in a building opposite St. Mary's Church, but in 1911 Hendon UDC announced a competition for a new fire station. The competition was won by Herbert Welch, architect for much of the nearby centre of Golders Green, an important suburban Edwardian development. Welch went on to be a partner in the firm, Cachemaille-Day, Welch and Lander, which designed a number of inter-war buildings of note. Hendon specified that the station should harmonise with the Urban Council Offices which had opened in 1900 to the designs of TH Watson. Its Arts and Crafts style is clearly influenced by the London County Council stations of previous decade. The original plan was published (in reverse) in The Fireman. The building included a flat for the Chief Officer at first floor, a dormitory for single men (this room now the mess) and four flats for married men on the second floor. The perambulator store at ground floor reflected this on-site family accommodation. The second largest room after the engine room is the recreation room with its large billiard table and windows on three sides, a distinctive feature of fire stations.
SOURCES: 'Hendon's New Central Fire Station' The Fireman (March 1912)
Andrew Saint, 'London's Architecture and the London Fire Brigade, 1866-1938' (Heinz Gallery RIBA, Exhibition Catalogue, 1981)
John B. Nadal, London's Fire Stations (Huddersfield, 2006) 'Hampstead: Public Services'
REASONS FOR DESIGNATION: Hendon Fire Station is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
* Special architectural interest for its Arts and Crafts styling so skillfully employed by designers of fire stations in this period, and at Hendon with a grandeur brought from the Tudor styling.
* Strong group value with the adjacent library of 1929 and the town hall 1900, both of which are listed at Grade II and which together form an impressive group of early-C20 municipal buildings.
