Treadgolds

Treadgolds, Bishop Street, Portsea

This is a complex of early and late 18th-century houses that were originally built for Royal Dockyard personnel and later adapted from 1809 onwards into an ironmongers business, steel works, and associated industrial premises. It is now an industrial museum. The site contains remains of seven early 18th-century houses, two late 18th-century houses, and various structures built or adapted during the 19th century.

The buildings are constructed mainly of red brick in Flemish bond with some grey headers. Roofing includes Welsh slate on the shop premises to the far right, plain tiles to the left, and corrugated iron over the left-hand buildings. The house has a Welsh slate hipped roof.

The Bishop Street frontage to the east comprises six structures of varying dates. The shop premises is two storeys and four bays, but comprises three original separate buildings. The two central bays were a house of 1717 that Treadgold's took over in 1809-11. The left-hand bay was a 1716 store with ground floor central passageway leading to a court of houses behind. At the centre of the right-hand premises is a 9-pane half-glazed door with lower flush panels and blind overlight. To left and right are 24-pane (6 x 4) and 32-pane (8 x 4) shop windows respectively, each flanked by Tuscan pilasters and with attached iron guard rails with spode finials. A fascia and bracketed cornice runs across the front. To the left is a service entrance door with 2-leaf patterned iron gate and a hatch over on the first floor. The first floor has two 12-pane sashes and one 20-pane casement, each with moulded architraves. Above the doorway is a recessed plaque with shaped frame and a large painted stone lion, a symbol of Treadgolds, which was in place by 1870 as shown in a contemporary photograph.

To the right is a three-storey, one-bay house originally a two-storey house of 1704-6 with rear extension of 1710, heightened in 1834 by Treadgold's. On the right is a 2-moulded panel door with fanlight set under a rounded gauged brick arch with stone imposts. To the left and to the first and second floors is a 14-pane sash set under a gauged brick flat arch with stone sill. A dentil brick cornice and brick coped parapet mark the top. To the left is a two-storey extension, originally a three-storey house of 1726-36 truncated in the later 19th century to form a store. This is rendered with a service door and casement over. Furthest to the left is a one-storey red and grey brick building, originally a house of 1708 reduced in height around 1960 with a monopitch corrugated iron roof added. The south and east fronts are red brick. Some sash windows face onto an internal court.

The interior contains significant features from various periods. Ground floor ceiling beams incorporate ships timbers, likely from 17th-century vessels being broken up in the early 18th century. These include a former cannon ball rack with exposed recesses for 32-pound cannon balls, massive deck beams, and bulwark timbers. A former covered way is supported on three ships deck beams. Chamfered newel posts survive from an early 18th-century staircase in the 1717-18 house, and some original roof timbers remain.

The 1834 alterations include a staircase with stick balusters and mahogany handrail, doorcases with paterae and reeding to the architraves, a first floor fireplace with duck's nest firegrate and paterae and reeding surround, a cast iron fireplace, and a second floor 19th-century Carron fireplace. An early 19th-century front door with oval panels at first floor level survives, possibly reused from elsewhere on the site.

Treadgold's former ground floor office retains office fittings of 1863, comprising built-in desks, glazed screen, and safe. The Director's office behind retains a late 19th-century cast iron fireplace. The former shop retains original shelving dating through the 19th and into the 20th century. A 19th-century slate urinal survives. The first floor showroom retains some 19th-century wallpaper and there is First World War graffito on the first floor of Treadgold's house.

This site was developed after 1704 when Queen Anne authorised the building of houses for Dockyard personnel on Sea Mill Furlong, Portsea to relieve pressure within the walled city caused by increasing dockyard population. From 1809, Treadgold's established a shop along Bishop Street and adapted adjoining houses for living accommodation in 1834. The original shop was extended to the right in 1849-50 on the site of a knacker's yard with an extension to the shop area and office above. The street shopfront has remained unaltered since an 1870 photograph. In 1863 an office was installed on the ground floor of the house, a late 18th-century tenement adjoining King's Bench Alley was converted into a store, and a warehouse was built in the centre of the site. A stableyard was built in 1867 on the site of earlier tenements. In 1873-74 a forge and workshop was built on the site of three late 18th-century tenements and some earlier warehouses. Treadgold's ceased trading in 1988 and has since become an industrial museum.