Buildings of Interest

Description

At the Annual General Sessions held at Preston on 28 June 1877, the Lancashire County Magistrates resolved:-

“That a plot of land situate at Ashton-in-Mackerfield, in the division of Wigan, and containing 304-and-a-half superficial square yards or thereabouts, be taken on lease for the term of 999 years, at a yearly rent not exceeding threepence per square yard, and that a police station, and strong rooms for temporary confinement of prisoners, in accordance with the plans now laid before the court, be erected thereupon, and that a sum not exceeding £1,100 be granted for the above purpose, and be classed as local expenditure, to be defrayed out of the police rates of the said division of Wigan”.

The new station would be a replacement for Ashton's first County Police Station, built on the corner of Bryn Street and Gerard Street in 1850.

On 29 March, 1879 the Wigan Observer reported that

“Sergeant Savage and his men moved from the old to the new police station on Monday. It need scarcely be stated that the new building is a great improvement upon the old one. The builders are Messrs. France and Smith, of Newtown.”

But for the absence of a central bay window at ground-floor level (possibly sacrificed at Ashton owing to the narrowness of the pavement) the Warrington Road building is identical to a police station completed at Haydock four years earlier. This suggests that both were built to a standard design or template in use at that period. The architect was very likely Henry Littler senior, father of the first County Architect of the same name who would later design Ashton's Old Road police station.

Following the completion of the Old Road station in 1904, Warrington Road was retained by the Lancashire Constabulary for police accommodation purposes until 1954. The exterior of the building has since been sympathetically restored and the interior divided into self-contained apartments." 

Text and images by the Makerfield Rambler