The last time I went to London, I wanted to see something other than museums and restaurants. This is how I managed to find the smallest police station in Great Britain. Yeah, this is for real. It is located on the southeast corner of Trafalgar Square.
If you have been to this square, there is a great chance you already have seen this, but since you didn’t know what you were looking for, you ignored it like everybody else who went by while I was taking pictures of it on a cold February night earlier this year.
Britain’s smallest police station is often overlooked because of its size. Most people at Trafalgar Square don’t even know what is on the corner. But it wasn’t always like that. It was built in 1926 so London’s Metropolitan Police could monitor what was happening around it.
Like an old-school version of a CCTV camera.
Like a CCTV camera, this police station was meant to be somewhat hidden so it could take care of problems without drawing too much attention. This is why it was built inside an ornamental light fitting. This way, most people walking around and leaving the subway station in front of it would not even realize that there were police so close.
If you look around the police station, you can see that it has a set of narrow windows that can be used to look all around Trafalgar Square. Also, there used to be a line connecting it straight into Scotland Yard in case reinforcements were needed. Supposedly, if somebody were using the phone, the light on top of the police station would flash, alerting any police officers in the area that there was trouble.
The smallest police station in Great Britain looks small from the outside, but it was built to accommodate up to two prisoners at a time.
You won’t see anything like this now, and today, the police no longer use it. Right now, it’s used by the Westminster Council cleaners as broom storage, but when I was there, I couldn’t see anything inside.
If you want to find this weird sight that London has to offer, go to Trafalgar Square and look for the subway exit. In the southeast corner is a small stone box with a light fixture on top. If you find it, you are at the right place.
The Smallest Police Station in Great Britain
Trafalgar Square
London, United Kingdom
