Old police site for auction

Auctioneers have put an estimated guide price of £140,000 on the Warrington Road landmark, which was built around 1900.

The front counter closed to enquiries from the public in 2003. The remainder of the station had mostly been used for storage before then.

For a short time afterwards officers were deployed from the station. The kennels there were also relocated around this time, as the area was served instead by the-then new Bamfurlong police station.

The prospect of closing up to a dozen smaller police stations across Wigan and Leigh had been discussed as far back as 1998.

Once the station’s three tiny cells would have been expected to hold up to 18 prisoners but no-one had been remanded there for a number of years.

The latest development in the station’s storied history will unfold at the AJ Bell Stadium in Salford on July 18 when it goes under the hammer with Newton-le-Willows based auctioneers Pugh and Company.

A spokesman for the auction house said: “(This is ) vacant police station, with residential planning consent for change of use to four residential units, together with the demolition of an outbuilding and the erection of four terraced dwellings.”

Several attempts have been made in the past to bring the building back into use since police operations ceased there.

Plans for offices, lodged in 2007, which would have involved a rear extension, were never progressed.

And a separate bid for a children’s nursery, unveiled in 2011, which would have seen the old police yard converted into a play area, didn’t come to fruition.

The former Shevington and Orrell police stations, mentioned as part of the sweeping 1998 review alongside, were each subsequently converted for housing.

Pemberton’s Ormskirk Road station was pulled down and replaced by flats and offices.

The same programme saw the old borough police headquarters in Harrogate Street replaced by the current sub-divisional base in Robin Park Road.