The Royal Marines Museum

The Royal Marines Museum, Eastney Esplanade, Portsmouth

Officers' quarters and mess, now museum. Built circa 1865 and designed by William Scamp for the Admiralty Works Department; converted to museum use in the 1980s.

The building is constructed in red brick in Flemish bond with yellow brick frieze and rusticated quoins and pilasters. The centrepiece is faced in ashlar with ashlar faced ground and first-floor bands, cornice, blocking course and coping. The slate roofs are hipped at the centre, with mansard roofs over the wings and deep multi-flue corniced cross-ridge chimneys.

The plan follows a double-depth arrangement with a large central stair hall. The exterior presents three storeys with basement and attic. The centrepiece consists of seven bays, slightly recessed, and features Tuscan-pilastered Italianate galleries to the ground and first floors. The ground-floor galleries are segmental-arched; those on the first floor are round-arched with double-pilastered slightly-projecting centre. The architraves have imposts and console keystones, with balustrade across the arches and above the entablature forming a second-floor balcony. An imperial stair with two flights becoming one, with similar balustrade, rises to the first-floor entrance, which has a part-glazed double-door and side-lights. Tripartite sashes light the ground floor; round-arched sashes with keyed architraves serve the first and second floors. The eaves cornice features a central console-bracketed pediment carved with the Royal Coat of Arms and initials, signed "C.R. Smith". The side-wings comprise eight bays each, with the innermost three bays breaking forward slightly and four-pane sashes in reveals with segmental brick arches. At the rear, a central block of two storeys projects with a full-height three-bay bow.

The interior is lavish, with panelled doors in enriched architraves, decorative fireplaces, and ceilings that are in some cases compartmental, featuring decorative friezes, cornices and plasterwork. The former dining room is particularly notable, with decorative pilasters, a heavy coved ceiling with rich plaster decoration and chandelier roundels, and a triple entrance with arches above giving onto a minstrels' gallery. The stair hall contains a cantilevered stone imperial stair of special architectural interest. The elaborate balustrade alternates between columnar balusters supporting spheres depicting the world and balusters formed of decorative openwork panels with a fouled anchor at the base; carved columns at the foot of the stair support lamps. The decorative motifs and features throughout make use of symbols associated with the Royal Marines and their motto.

This building formed the centrepiece of a complete Marines barracks and is among the most architecturally distinguished officers' barracks in England. William Scamp was assistant director of the Admiralty Works Department and was associated with works in the Royal Dockyards at this period. The carefully laid-out site beside the seashore reflects its original use by the Marines and represents the last large defensible barracks in the country. It forms part of the best and most complete barracks of the post-Crimean War period.