15, Coldharbour

This is a two-bay house built in 1843 on the Isle of Dogs. It is constructed of stock brick, rendered on the front elevation, with stone cills and coping. The roof is slate. The house has three storeys and an attic, with a rectangular plan and a staircase along the north wall. Each floor originally contained two rooms, with partitioned and glazed sections serving as lavatories opposite the stairwell.

The front to the street has a door to the left of an infilled opening, and features 9/9-pane sash windows. The river front is partially obscured by a concrete platform constructed around 1995, which supports a glazed sun lounge at first floor level. Tripartite window openings are present on the first and second floors of the river elevation.

The ground floor originally served as a mast-making workshop and includes partly sub-divided areas with board partitions and internal glazing, along with heavy exposed lateral beams. The staircase is plain to the first floor, but the upper flights are of good quality, featuring upswept mahogany handrails, turned columnar newels, spiral-turned posts to the first floor, and plain square rails. Much of the original joinery survives, including richly reeded door and window architraves on the first floor. A fireplace with a reeded surround is found in the front room on the first floor. The upper floors are simpler but largely retain their original character. Two-panel doors with lozenge-pierced overdoor panels lead to the attic.

The house was built in 1843-44 for Benjamin Granger Bluett, a joiner, mast- and blockmaker, whose workshop occupied the ground floor above a saw-pit. A previous structure dating to around 1770 existed on the site. In 1894, the house was acquired by the Metropolitan Asylums Board and adapted to serve as a reception centre for immigrants with contagious illnesses, at which time interior subdivisions were added to the ground floor and extensions on the south side were constructed (now removed). The house is notable for its largely intact early 1840s interior, its docklands association as a rare survival of a purpose-built workshop with living accommodation above, and for the changes made in the 1890s, which are also part of its history.