A trip to Kent at the weekend led to visiting two decommissioned Police Stations – one in Gravesend and one in Rochester. Unfortunately the wrecking ball got to the latter before I could and a flattened site greeted me. I was quite disappointed by this but such is the inevitable fate of these old concrete buildings. So here are the pictures of the old town-centre Police Station in the North-West town of Gravesend.
Alongside the town’s theatre and on a road between a Masonic Hall and a Baptist Church, the 6-storey building consists of a red-brick plinth base and a concrete-panelled tower. The stair wells at either end of the linear form are heavily articulated and draw the eye to the typically understated entrance. The chamfered exposed-aggregate panels provide a fantastic purchase for pigeons and they can be found roosting in the dark bands that define the floor levels.
The force have moved out of the building to an out-of-town glass box nearby, conveying a new policing ideology of transparency and approachability. The demolition of the nearby Rochester Station and the potential difficulties in finding a new occupant for this specialist building outline the change in the built form of the Police force and the race that I am in to document these modernist beasts before their inevitable demise.
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