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Ello, ello ‘I know you’ll like this,’ said Mr Ashley, pointing to the word ‘POLICE’ above the door. And, in spite of the rain, before you could say ‘Ello, ello,’ I was out of the car and taking photographs. I was attracted immediately by the beautifully arranged glazing bars that make a pattern of elongated hexagons, diamonds and triangles across each of the five front windows. And to the simple lettering of the sign, cut in stone. And to the peculiar stepped pediment above the door that frames the sign. Not to mention the careful detailing of the brickwork. As I was taking all this in, the owner of this former police station, now house, emerged. She explained that she and her husband were restoring the house, and that he was busy removing generations of paint from the glazing bars. If you click on the picture and look very closely, you might be able to see that those on the bottom left window, and the left-hand casement of the top right window, have already been done. The difference i...

Base station I’ve meant for a while to take a photograph of one of London’s few surviving police boxes – those blue kiosks from which police officers and the public could get in direct contact with a police station – but the other day I saw this rather different one in Sheffield and thought it would make an interesting alternative. Sheffield’s police began to install boxes like this one by the Town Hall during the 1920s and continued to use them until the 1960s, by which time officers were equipped with personal radios. Each one had a telephone that any member of the police or the public could use to report a crime or other emergency – it was accessible from the outside by opening the small cupboard door beneath the window. In addition officers, as well as calling out from the box, would visit it every hour, when the station telephoned through any important information. Officers out on patrol often used the boxes for meal breaks or even for doing a bit of quick report writing. The Shef...

Streaky bacon Looking at Google Earth on a relative’s mobile the other day and marvelling at how much of London we could see, we chanced upon the Victoria Embankment and I was reminded how, whenever I’m at that end of Westminster Bridge I turn away from the Houses of Parliament (magnificent as they are) and look at these two buildings by the river. They were designed by Norman Shaw as New Scotland Yard – the North Building (right) first, followed by the South. The Metropolitan Police moved into the North Building in 1890, and into the South Building in 1906, after which the two blocks remained the headquarters of the force until 1967. They’re now parliamentary offices.* When the first building began to go up at the end of the 1880s, this style of architecture was still new. People were rather baffled by it. They’d spent much of the 19th century being told that there was a ‘battle of styles’ between Gothic and Classical. Nobody won the battle, but the Victorians built hundreds of Gothic...