The Customs House And Attached Railings

The Customs House and Attached Railings, Grimsby

A customs house, now operating as a restaurant, built in 1874 with cast-iron railings attached to an ashlar wall. The building has undergone late 20th-century internal alterations.

The structure is constructed in red brick with black brick and stone dressings, and is topped with a Welsh slate roof. The main range is rectangular in plan, measuring 5 by 2 bays, with a wing extending to the rear left that forms one side of a walled courtyard.

The exterior presents a symmetrical 2-storey façade with 5 bays, the central bay breaking forward while bays 1 and 5 are narrower. A chamfered stone plinth runs along the base, with angle pilasters and channelled rustication to the ground floor marked by flush black brick bands. A flight of 5 steps with coped walls and railings leads to the round-arched entrance. The entrance features a 2-fold panelled door and fanlight (boarded over at the time of survey) set in a moulded brick reveal with marble nook-shafts, a carved stone hoodmould, a pair of stone roundels in the spandrels, and a carved stone frieze and cornice.

The windows are plate-glass sashes in wooden architraves and moulded brick reveals, with bracketed stone sills and brick flat arches framed by billet-moulded brick architraves. A brick and stone first-floor string course with billet moulding runs across the façade, topped by a frieze with circular medallions and a moulded cornice. The central bay contains a 2-light window with a carved centre pilaster decorated with foliate volutes. Above this, carved stone brackets support a pilastered segmental-pedimented panel that breaks the roofline, bearing a large plaque with the Royal Arms in relief, another plaque inscribed "CUSTOM HOUSE" below it, and a dated roundel in the tympanum. Side bays feature windows and surrounds similar to the ground floor but with raised apron panels and sill string courses.

An ornate brick and stone frieze at the eaves displays dentilled and billet mouldings, bracketed modillions, and cross motifs in black brick. The roof is hipped, with 3 main roof-stacks, each featuring cogged brick cornices and 4 linked octagonal shafts topped with a moulded stone cap.

The left and right returns display similar windows and decorative details, with a single door to the right return. A single-storey wing to the rear left has a plinth, steps to a plain door, and plate-glass sashes with wooden architraves and stone sills beneath brick flat arches, with a dentilled brick eaves cornice and 2 ridge stacks with twin octagonal shafts.

The adjoining courtyard features an entrance to the rear right with square piers having dentilled brick cornices and caps, and a brick-coped wall ramped up to each side.

The interior contains main rooms on each floor, including entrance and staircase halls, fitted with arched alcoves and moulded ceiling cornices and friezes. The entrance hall has an encaustic tiled floor with a prominent wave motif. A moulded round arch opens into a large staircase hall, which has been partly infilled with a later doorway. The open-well cantilevered staircase features stone steps and a balustrade with ornate cast-iron panels incorporating the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway Company cypher. The staircase has a wooden swept handrail with a second, upper, tubular brass handrail, both rails curving up boldly from ground level; the wooden rail has a moulded octagonal iron base. An embossed patterned dado with a moulded wooden dado rail runs up the stairwell, and the ceiling displays a moulded frieze, cornice, and central roundel.

The front railings are mounted on a dwarf ashlar wall and feature square column principals and bars with tall finials above a single top rail, with dog bars rising to an interlaced openwork frieze.

The building was constructed and completed by the Royal Dock Company, built by the Office of Works, at the same time as the first waterway link between the Royal Dock and the Haven Dock (later the Alexandra Dock). The staircase cypher of the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway Company presumably dates from after 1890, when that company took over the Royal Dock Company.