Police Stations Andy Robertson has known ………….. Failsworth

Now Andy Robertson collects police stations, and especially those stone clad ones built by the Lancashire Constabulary in the late 1880s and 1890s.

Failsworth, 2019

To date he has bagged the one in Chorlton-cum-Hardy, 1885, the one in Patricroft 1892, and now the one in Failsworth which was also built in 1892.

And I have no doubt that lurking somewhere is the Didsbury Station which dates only from 1900 and lacks the fine stone facing.

I suppose they beat Dinky Toys and cigarette cards in both grandeur and the stories behind them and are not so easy to keep in an album in the spare room.

a vacant Police Station, Failsworth, 2019

But I am being daft, because while Andy does photograph them, they are usually part of a bigger project recording the changing character of bits of Greater Manchester.

And all four were long ago vacated by the constabulary and turned to other uses.  The Chorlton one has been a restaurant and bar since the mid-1990s, Patricroft was being marketed as luxury apartments back in 2016, leaving me with Failsworth which appears to be empty.

Patricroft, 2016

I did once go looking for the story of Lancashire’s expansion of its police stations and was rewarded with some interesting correspondence from the Greater Manchester Police Museum and Archives, but alas I was sidetracked and never returned to the project.

But I may now do so, confident that Andy will offer up some examples and out there will be an expert on Lancashire Police Stations.

We shall see.

Location; Failsworth

Pictures, Failsworth Police Station, 2019, and Patricroft Police Station, 2016, from the collection of Andy Robertson