Old Lifeboat House

This is a former Lifeboat House, constructed in 1884 to designs by C H Cooke. The building is constructed of rich red brick laid in English bond, with brick dressings and a red clay tile roof. It has a long rectangular plan and faces south-east.

The building has a picturesque character reflecting the domestic revival style. The steeply pitched roof is hipped at the rear (north-west) end, featuring a louvred gablet and original cresting along the ridge. Gabled dormer windows are present halfway along each roof slope, with fishscale tiling, and some cresting remains on the south-west dormer. A decorative brick cornice incorporates ovolo, lozenge, and bead mouldings, and the low plinth is edged in blue brick.

The principal south-east elevation has a full-width opening designed for the entry and egress of the lifeboat on its carriage. The original doors have been replaced with vertical timber boarding, incorporating a smaller entrance door, though the hinges of the original doors remain. Stepped buttresses flank the opening, capped in white-painted stone and surmounted by gabled pediments decorated with moulded brick rosettes and individual leaf tiles. Each buttress features a glazed terracotta roundel commemorating the date (1884) and the dedication of the building to the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLBI). A marble plaque on the left-hand buttress displays the arms of the Honourable Artillery Company, alongside details of the inauguration ceremony. The gable head is hung with fish-scale tiling and features a three-sided, corbelled oriel with multi-pane windows and a semi-circular arched glazing bar in the top central section, reminiscent of an Ipswich window. The oriel roof is partly clad in fish-scale tiles and topped by a weather vane, which is not original. The oriel served as a lookout and provided light for the interior.

The side elevations have four window openings, each with segmental brick arches. A door has been installed at the second opening from the left on the south-west side, with the original windows blocked and covered with security bars. The rear elevation is largely obscured, but a historic photograph shows a small, single-storey brick projection under a steeply pitched roof with a three-sided hip.

The interior is a double-height space open to the roof, which features a king-post truss strengthened with iron straps. A flagstone floor is present and the brick walls are painted white, with the exception of some Romanesque buttresses between the window bays. Segmental brick arches remain over the blocked window openings. A small mezzanine at the front (south-east) end was likely used for storing sails and equipment. A wide segmental brick arch at the rear (north-west) end originally marked a back entrance, now blocked up and replaced with a small door, which leads to a late 19th-century office extension.