Former Customs Watch House

Customs Watch House

This is a Customs Watch House built in 1909 and designed by the architect Arthur Beresford Pite. It stands at the Western Docks in Dover, overlooking the entrance into the inner harbour.

The building is constructed from rough-tooled snecked ragstone with a base of coursed rough-faced granite blocks and dressed granite details. It has cast iron casement windows and a slate roof topped with a copper dome. The structure follows a rectangular plan with two storeys. Each floor contains four rooms arranged off a central corridor, and the second floor incorporates a belvedere. A central stair connects the levels, with two chimneys positioned to the south.

The design adopts the Arts and Crafts style. The principal north elevation, which faces the harbour entrance, is defined by a broad central gabled entrance bay. This bay features a canted oriel window with three six-paned lights, above which sits the royal coat of arms carved in relief from stone blocks. The oriel is surmounted by an octagonal lantern with a domed copper roof. The stepped and heavily moulded base of the oriel forms the head of a deep door surround containing double entrance doors that are half-panelled with semicircular lights forming a complete roundel when closed. Keyed oculi flank the entrance. The right-hand bay contains keyed oculi at ground and first floor level. The left-hand bay has a keyed oculus at first floor and a keyed Venetian window at ground floor. The east elevation displays a pair of two-light mullioned windows with semi-circular keyed relieving arches at first floor level and a single keyed Venetian window at ground floor. The first floor corners are chamfered with a rectangular light set in each diagonal face. The south elevation contains two irregular external stacks; one single stack to the west and one double stack to the east. The east stack is pierced with two-light mullioned windows at ground and first floor levels. Between the stacks are four three-light mullioned windows, two at ground floor and two at first floor, together with a central keyed oculus. The west elevation comprises a keyed oculus positioned above two two-light mullioned windows. The building retains much of its original fabric, with the notable exception of the weather vane on the domed lantern roof.

Inside, the layout remains largely unaltered and much of the modest joinery survives. Fireplaces have generally been removed. The central open-well stair features painted metal stick balusters and a metal handrail. A dog-leg stair to the lantern has timber stick balusters and square newel posts with ball finials.

Dover's original Customs House stood on Custom House Quay to the north-west of Granville Dock. Its date is unknown but it appears on Ordnance Survey maps between 1866 and 1907. By 1937 the building had gone, though the name Custom House Quay persisted. The original Customs House was likely demolished shortly after 1907, as the design for this new Customs Watch House dates to 1909.

During both the First and Second World Wars, the Port of Dover came under naval control and served as the base for the Dover Patrol, a fleet of approximately 40 warships, motor boats and fishing vessels that maintained control of the English Channel. When the Second World War ended, the Navy withdrew by November 1946. The post-war period saw the Western Docks adapt to increasing demand for cross-channel services and changing patterns of commercial shipping. As the Granville and Wellington Docks became too small to accommodate modern vessels, these areas gradually transitioned to marinas and leisure use, reducing the need for a dedicated Customs Watch House. The building is now used as offices for an aggregates company based on the South Pier.

Arthur Beresford Pite (1861–1934) was an architect and educator and son of the architect Alfred Robert Pite (1832–1911). Pite trained at University College and the Architectural Association in London. In 1882, his accomplished Gothic design for a West End club house earned him the Soane medallion of the Royal Institute of British Architects, bringing him early recognition. Between 1883 and 1897 he worked in the office of the London architect John Belcher, through whom he became involved with the Art-Workers' Guild, founded in 1884, and later became its master. After 1900, much of Pite's time was devoted to teaching. He became the first professor of architecture at the newly formed Royal College of Art and served as architectural director of the School of Building in Brixton, a pioneering educational project that brought together architects, artists and builders. From 1909 to 1931, he was a member of the University of Cambridge Board of Architectural Studies.

The security that teaching provided allowed Pite to select his projects carefully. He worked on an eclectic variety of building types and was regarded as experimental and avant-garde by his contemporaries. In comparison to other projects Pite was undertaking at this stage of his career, such as Christ Church, Brixton (1907, listed Grade II*), and the massive London, Edinburgh and Glasgow insurance offices on Euston Square (1906–8), widely considered his masterpiece, the Customs Watch House was a modest commission. However, Pite often chose projects that offered opportunities to establish new models for particular building types.

In designing the Customs Watch House, Pite discarded convention to create an eclectic and idiosyncratic building. Dating from the most creative phase of his career, it is a testament to his diverse and unconventional body of work.