Whitley Bay, police station and magistrates court

The Whitley Bay police station and magistrates court is first shown on the Ordnance Survey 1919 1:2500 map. The complex is shown as a block of buildings defined by Laburnum Avenue to the west, Mafeking Street (now Fern Avenue) to the south, and unnamed back streets to the east and north, with the police station labelled as small building on the western side. A smithy is shown at the northern end of the block.
The police station appears to have been flanked by the magistrates courts whose entrances to the left (Public) and right (Magistrates) are marked by stone plaques. Later maps suggest that these were incorporated into the police station. The building is constructed in red brick with other decorative stone elements such as string courses, and scrolls and balls on the two Dutch gables on the west front.
The building forming the northern part of the complex is of rather different design, again in brick but with stone quoins and lintels to the doors and windows on the west face. The north and east faces are very plain and much altered.
The buildings forming the southern part of the complex are more domestic in scale and may originally have been police housing. The building at the southeast corner of the block (5 Mafeking Street) was last used as the Coroner's Office.
The building was closed in early 2017.