Old Lifeboat House

Former Lifeboat House built in 1884 to the designs of C H Cooke.

MATERIALS: rich red brick laid in English bond with brick dressings and a roof covering of red clay tiles.

PLAN: the building has a long rectangular plan and faces south-east.

EXTERIOR: the double-height building has a picturesque character in the domestic revival style. The steeply pitched roof is hipped on the rear (north-west) end with a louvred gablet. It is surmounted by cresting along the ridge and has gabled dormer windows halfway along each slope with fishscale tiling, with some remaining cresting on the south-west dormer. The decorative brick cornice is enriched with ovolo, lozenge and bead mouldings, and the low plinth is edged in blue brick. The principal south-east elevation has a full-width opening to allow the entry and egress of the lifeboat on its carriage. The original doors have been replaced with vertical timber boarding which has a small inserted entrance door. The hinges of the original doors remain. The opening is flanked by stepped buttresses which are capped in stone (painted white) and surmounted by gabled pediments decorated with moulded brick rosettes and individual leaf tiles. Each buttress bears a glazed terracotta roundel commemorating the date (1884) and the dedication of the building (RNLBI). A marble plaque on the left-hand buttress which incorporates the arms of the donor, the Honourable Artillery Company, is engraved with the details of the inauguration ceremony. The gable head is hung with fish-scale tiling and is dominated by a three-sided, corbelled oriel with multi-pane windows and a semi-circular arched glazing bar in the top central section, suggesting an Ipswich window. The oriel roof is partly clad in fish-scale tiles and surmounted by a weather vane (which is not original). The oriel provided a ‘lookout’ as well as light for the interior generally.

The subsidiary side elevations are pierced by four window openings with segmental brick arches. On the south-west side the second opening from the left has been extended to install a door. The windows have been blocked and are covered with security bars. It was not possible to see the rear elevation except for its roof but a historic photograph shows that it was a small, single-storey brick projection under a steeply pitched roof with a three-sided hip.

INTERIOR: the double-height space is open to the roof which has a king-post truss strengthened with iron straps. There is a flagstone floor and the brick walls are painted white, except for some of the Romanesque buttresses in between the window bays. The blocked window openings have segmental brick arches. A small mezzanine at the front (south-east) end was perhaps used to store sails and other kit. At the rear (north-west) end a wide segmental brick arch indicates the original back entrance which has since been blocked up and a small door inserted. This leads to the late C19 extension which is used as an office.