Maritime Buildings And Attached Balustrade

This is a pair of offices, constructed around 1900, designed by Henderson and Hall. The building is marked on Ordnance Survey maps as Refuge Assurance Buildings. It is built of bright red brick with ashlar bands and dressings, and has a Lakeland slate roof with ashlar copings, brick and ashlar chimneys, and a lead dome. Attached to the right return to West Sunniside is a wrought-iron balustrade to the cellar steps.

The building is three storeys and a basement, with a 2:1:2 window arrangement and a corner turret. The central bay features a panelled entrance door with a plain overlight, set within a round-headed surround featuring a high keystone and voussoirs to an open pediment supported by rusticated pilasters. A carved panel sits above the door, flanked by pilasters supporting a cornice. A two-light stone mullion and transom window is positioned above the doorway, also with a cornice. A two-light mullion window on the second floor has a segmental pediment. The gabled sections flanking the central bay have blocked cellar openings below three-light mullion and transom windows, with shaped aprons to similar first-floor windows, also with cornices. Projecting sills are present on the second-floor corniced three-light mullion windows. Paired two-light windows are set within the gable peaks under small raised segmental copings. Ashlar bands are flush to the sills and lintels. The corner turret has narrow lights with a similar treatment to the rest of the building, with a small round-headed light flanked by cartouches on the top floor. Original upper glazing bars remain in some windows on the ground and first floors, and in some windows on the upper floors. Two straight-headed dormers are over the central bay, and tall ashlar-corniced chimneys are on the ridge and behind the turret. On the right return to West Sunniside, there is a central basement entrance and windows similar to the main facade, with a shallow bowed first-floor oriel. The wrought-iron balustrade to the cellar steps is decorated with trailing sunflower and leaf ornament.