Admiralty House (Building Number 1/20) And Attached Railings

Admiralty House and attached railings

Commissioner's house, now Commander-in-Chief's residence. Built 1784-6 by Samuel Wyatt, with Clerk of Works Thomas Telford, for the Navy Board. The building suffered bomb damage in 1941 with subsequent restoration. Mid-19th-century additions and alterations were made. It is constructed of yellowish brick in Flemish bond with ashlar dressings, with hipped slate roofs and brick stacks. The centrepiece stacks have ashlar cornices and are flanked by a cupola. The building displays Mid Georgian style.

The exterior comprises three storeys with basement, five bays, with slightly recessed three-bay wings of one storey with basement, and single-storey one-bay end pavilions. At the left end is a two-storey two-bay addition with gable end-on, projecting slightly. There is an ashlar plinth and ground-floor band, a moulded sill string to the ground floor, a first-floor sill band, and a dentilled cornice and blocking course to the centrepiece. The wings have a cornice and ashlar parapet with balustraded panels, and the pavilions have corniced pediments. Windows have gauged brick flat arches with sashes with glazing bars. Those on the first floor and to the left wing have been replaced, while the second-floor windows have six-pane sashes with ashlar sills. Louvred shutters were added to the first and second floors. At the centre is a mid-to-late-19th-century portico with round-arched entrance and windows, an iron-bracketed canopy, parapet, and stone steps inside leading up to the entrance with a part-glazed, panelled double door. A two-stage wooden cupola with an octagonal upper stage was added, featuring round-arched windows, pilasters, imposts and keystones, and a swept lead roof carrying a flagpole. The end pavilions each have a window within a round-arched recess; the left window was replaced by a wide nineteenth-century tripartite sash. The addition at the left end has an internal porch on the right with Ionic columns supporting an entablature and console-bracketed segmental pediment, six-pane sashes (shorter on the second floor), and a modillioned eaves cornice. At the right end are stone steps down to the basement area with iron railings and a gate; the bars are of bulging I-section and the gate has a base rail of ovals.

The rear features a three-bay centrepiece with a mid-nineteenth-century central two-storey porch addition and flanking pilastered bay windows. On the left is a late-nineteenth-century projecting single-storey billiard room with a roof lantern. The right-hand wing was rebuilt after bomb damage and links to an end pavilion which has a tall window in a round-arched recess.

The interior contains an entrance vestibule with fluted foliate cornice and pilastered architraves leading to a full-depth hall with a rich cornice featuring urn, garland and egg-and-dart motifs. Off the hall are the drawing and dining rooms. The drawing room has a decorative marble fireplace by John Bacon with a central portrait and with Neptune's trident and entwined dolphins to the pilaster jambs. The dining room has a similar fireplace also by Bacon, with a decorative shell centrepiece flanked by dolphins and lions' heads, and garlands to the pilaster jambs. There is also a semi-domed recess in the dining room with decorative plasterwork including a central roundel and ribs of husks, flanked by doors in original corniced architraves with acanthus-leaf friezes. A decorative fireplace is also present in the morning room at the front right, and the former library at the front left was recorded as having original bookcases, one still intact. The main staircase was rebuilt in the mid-twentieth century and has mid-to-late-nineteenth-century-style openwork balusters. The original dog-leg secondary staircase has stick balusters, scrolled brackets, and a second handrail carried on a band of ovals. On the first and second floors are panelled doors, reveals, and shutters, along with decorative wooden fireplaces and ceiling cornices, plainer on the second floor.

The building was constructed as the residence of the Navy Board's Commissioner, who was responsible for the daily running of the dockyard. It also accommodated visiting royalty and was built on a more lavish scale than might otherwise have been expected. It is notable as a rare and little-altered design within the dockyards by a national architect.