Wigan Police Station

Before the advent of explicit systems in Lancashire, it had become common practice to re-use already rationalised details and building systems. The last bespoke police station to be designed was Chorley (1968), accompanied by a magistrate’s court, this station building was almost replicated at Bury (though Bury also had a nuclear bunker and shooting range in the sub-basement!) and the court informed a very similar construction in Leyland. Eventually, police stations in Skelmersdale, Morecambe, St. Helens, Preston, Blackpool and Wigan were all constructed from the same system, developed by the R&D group in collaboration with a local manufacturer. In the initial stages the buildings were conceived as a kit of parts, the assembly of which would be specific to the particular site. The ‘Elemental Design Components’ consisted of operations wing, cell wing, basic ground floor, upper floor plates, service cores and chimneys. In the 1966-67 County Architect’s Report various configurations of these elements were presented as models to demonstrate the flexibility of the system. As the construction system was developed the idea of complete standardisation from the first floor upward was considered. This would permit the ground floor to behave as the site and programme conditions dictated. In this it is possible to reads the variation and some accession on the part of the designers to townscape. Despite the apparent brutality of the forms, the qualities of civic design and public realm were strongly articulated in the descriptions of the schemes. In the County Architect’s Report the ‘solid character’ of the new police HQ in Wigan (1973) was said to act as part of the town’s urban grain and to ‘close the vista from Millgate’ [1]. Surprisingly, this building was not demolished, it was stripped back and reclad and now operates as a Premier Inn hotel, almost unrecognisable from its earlier incarnation.

[1] County Architect’s Report, April 1971 to March 1973, Lancashire County Council, p.119, CC/GR/22, Lancashire County Record Office.