1. The house provided for a coastguardsman at his station. rare.
1833. Ht. Martineau, Loom & Lugger, I. v. 89. If they sent an order to all us Preventive people to vacate our station-houses and march off.
2. The lock-up attached to a police-station.
1836. Dickens, Sk. Boz, Visit to Newgate. Tell them of hunger and the streets,… the station-house, and the pawnbroker’s, and they will understand you.
1854. John Bull, 1 July, 411. Whallor was actually taken by a policeman to the station-house, the real criminal accompanying them, as witness.
1867. Augusta Wilson, Vashti, xxxiv. Watchman McDonough … picked up, on the sidewalk, the insensible body of Maurice Carlyle, who showed some signs of returning animation after his removal to Station House No. —.
3. A railway station; now only, a small country station.
1838. Times, 5/1. The station-house, close to Maidenhead, shows the terminus.
1846. Mrs. Gore, Engl. Char., 320. How different from the flashy gaudiness of a station-house albergo!
1850. Hawthorne, Amer. Note-bks. (1868), II. 199. It [the train] dashes along in front of the station-house, and comes to a pause.
1891. ‘J. S. Winter,’ Lumley, ii. When Jock Airlie and the painter came out of the little station-house, they found [etc.].
4. A building at which travellers halt in crossing the desert. ? nonce-use.
1856. Stanley, Sinai & Pal., i. (1858). One solitary station-house and fort marks this wilderness [the Desert of the Tih.]
5. Australian. The house belonging to a station.
1894. H. Nisbet, Bush Girl’s Rom., 234. Uncle Timothy, the sole representative of the nobler sex who could keep these ladies company at the deserted station-house.
