A real steal! Former police station is up for sale for £1.2million - and it comes with its own cells

Daily Mail​

29-04-2025

A former police station is up for sale for £1.2million and it even comes with its own cells.
The building was built in 1899 to serve as a police station in Swanage in Dorset.
It still has its original front desk and charge rooms as well as a series of cells with wooden beds.
In the listing for the property, estate agents have described it as an 'excellent redevelopment site' with planning permission to convert it into three three-bed flats and three four-bed homes.
The listing goes on to say: 'The property is situated on a prominent site about one third of a mile level distance from the town centre and beach.
'Swanage lies at the Eastern tip of the Isle of Purbeck, delightfully situated between the Purbeck Hills.
'It has a fine, safe, sandy beach, and is an attractive mixture of old stone cottages and more modern properties, all of which blend in well with the peaceful surroundings.
The kitchen that would have been used by staff is still in the site
'To the South is Durlston Country Park renowned for being the gateway to the Jurassic Coast and World Heritage Coastline.'
This station joins a list of odd things which have gone up for sale and it is far from the most unusual thing up for grabs.
As previously reported, a Cold War-era former observation bunker on the edge of the royal estate at Sandringham in Norfolk is going up for auction next week.
The Dersingham Royal Observer Corps post was once part of a large network of observation posts up and down the country which were constructed as part of an early warning system to detect impending nuclear attacks and calculate their impact.
The Dersingham post is buried in the land on the north-east side of Chalk Pit Road and has been well-preserved.
The site was built in 1957 and has two components: a concrete orlit hut above ground and a hidden bunker underground.
It will be up for auction on May 8 with a guide price of £20,000.
Both structures were completed due to the heightened threat of nuclear war at the time.
The orlit hut first emerged in key locations around the country to allow the ROC to monitor and assess possible attacks by aircraft.
As the danger from aircraft diminished and the possibility of missile attack increased, underground monitoring posts were subsequently constructed to provide additional protection.
The Dersingham post was built in 1957 and was Post 12 of Group Six in Norwich.
A metal ladder leads down 15 feet into the bunker area, which was constructed in a uniform style.
The site only has two rooms. The smaller of the two contained the toilet, while the large room was used for observation and sleeping.
While in use, it would have been kitted out with standardised furniture in the form of canvas chairs, a folding table, shelf, cupboard and a pair of metal-framed bunk beds.
Three crucial pieces of equipment would also have been housed here, namely the fixed survey meter, the bomb power indicator and the ground zero indicator, according to Auction House.
Each hut was designed to house three observers, each tasked tasked with specific duties.
The Dersingham post and hundreds of other posts were manned by trained uniformed volunteers from the 1950s through to 1991, when the last posts were closed and either demolished or sold off.