Former Rocket House

FORMER ROCKET HOUSE

This is a rocket house and look-out dating from the later 19th century, constructed between approximately 1860 and 1897. It is built of rubble sandstone with ashlar and red-brick dressings, topped with a slate roof.

The building is a tall, square two-storey structure with a pitched roof. The lower courses of a rear gable chimney stack remain, pierced by a metal flue at the eastern corner. The main elevation facing Bath Terrace is rendered and features an arched cart entrance on the ground floor, with original double wooden doors and a stone surround. Above this are a pair of tall rectangular first floor openings. The right return elevation has two ground floor windows and a single centrally placed first floor window. The left return has a first floor doorway (formerly reached by an external stone stairway, now removed) and a single ground floor opening. The rear elevation contains a large first floor window and a single inserted ground floor opening. All openings except those on the rear elevation have red brick surrounds with flat arches; windows have projecting stone sills.

Internally, the ground floor is divided by a stone wall into two compartments. The narrower right room is entered through an original opening and contains an inserted later dividing wall. The larger left compartment housed the cart containing rescue equipment and retains the remains of a small hearth and flue in one corner, with a timber ladder stair giving access to the upper floor through a plank and batten door. The first floor is a large open space, boarded to dado level, with the remains of a stove in one corner and a cupboard above the stair. Windows are boarded, though the north-east window overlooking the North Sea is large and retains its timber window frame, functioning as a look-out. The first floor doorway retains its original door with bolts and coat hooks. Original gas light fixtures remain in the ceiling, later superseded by electricity. The ceiling is unpainted timber boarding.

Around 500 Volunteer Life Brigades were established around the British coast in the second half of the 19th century. Their purpose was to assist the coast guard in rescue operations from shipwreck on the foreshore, using a rocket apparatus and Breeches buoy to supplement the work of lifeboats at sea. Facilities typically comprised a watch house, volunteer shelter, and storage shed for the apparatus. The first such brigade in the country was established at Tynemouth in 1865, following public concern over shipwreck deaths the previous year. Others followed in the north-east: Cullercoats in 1865, South Shields in 1866, Seaton Sluice in 1876, and Sunderland in 1877. Only those at Sunderland, South Shields and Tynemouth remain in use, now operating as Auxiliary Coast Guards. This rocket house is thought to have played a role in the rescue of the Norwegian bark Haabet, which ran aground at Cambois near Blyth during the Great Storm of 1901, when fifteen ships wrecked on the Northumberland coast and forty-four lives were lost. Despite having been built in their hundreds around the coast, rocket houses are rare survivals nationally, with only a handful of listed examples known.