Russell-Cotes Museum

House museum and art gallery, formerly East Cliff Hall. Built in 1894 by Bournemouth architect John Fogarty for Sir Merton and Lady Russell-Cotes. An eastern picture gallery wing was added in 1918–1919 by H.E. Hawker, and a western gallery wing was added in 1990 by Bournemouth Council Architect's Department.

The building is rendered in cement and features a tiled mansard roof with tall rendered chimney stacks and decorative cast iron balustrade. The southern bays are topped with a pyramidal roof flanked by conical roofs. Designed in French villa style, it is set on a steep slope with a single storey facing the road and three storeys to the garden.

A porch was added in 1907, forming a bulbous windowless pavilion housing the staircase. This adjoining structure has a glazed dome on a domical leaded base. The garden front features a central canted bay flanked by bowed bays, with a continuous copper hood above the second-floor windows. A loggia to the first floor follows the line of the bowed bays and is approached by stone balustraded imperial steps with a segmental arch giving access to stairs to the first floor.

An attached double-height picture gallery is rendered with rusticated pilasters and terracotta busts in modillions; it has a cornice and balustrade with urns. To the left stands a two-storey bowed conservatory with a rendered ground floor featuring three round-arched openings and a glazed first floor with a shallow conical roof. An attached three-storey extension, known as The Display Space, echoes the style of the main house in a simplified form.

The interior is a remarkable example of middle-class aesthetic decoration. A large top-lit double-height galleried hall with a black and gold painted imperial stair forms the centrepiece. Interior decoration was undertaken by O. Thomas and includes extensive stencilling, hand-painted ceilings and panels, tiles, and gold lincrusta wallpaper, together with fine door furniture. Good stained glass appears throughout windows, screens and top lights.

The hall is lined with mosaic-framed marble fountain and has a star-painted ceiling with a top light depicting the phases of the sun and signs of the zodiac. The stair features a stencilled dado and gold painted classical frieze beneath a stained glass dome depicting bats, owls, clouds and stars, with mosaic lyre-pattern squinches and lunettes containing painted figures in roundels.

The dining room has a painted peacock frieze on deep coving, supported on freestanding pink marble Corinthian columns flanking a round-arched inglenook. The overmantle and grate are in Elizabethan style with blue and white figure-painted cheeks, flanked by stained glass windows. A fretwork screen ornaments the window bay.

The morning room ceiling was replaced following war damage and painted in contemporary theatrical trompe-l'oeil style by Anne Zinkeisen. The French-style drawing room features 18th-century Florentine doors, a white and gold plaster ceiling, an elaborate chimneypiece and overmantle, and a fretwork screen to the window bay.

Upper rooms contain variously scenically painted ceilings and cornices depicting Burmese, Japanese, pastoral and nautical scenes. Lady Russell-Cotes's boudoirs are in Adam Revival style with a pink stencilled scheme incorporating cameo medallions and laurel swags, a good chimneypiece and overmantle, and a fretwork screen to the window bay.

An Arabic-style painted polygonal vestibule with a stained glass dome leads to a study with an open screen, golden imitation Spanish leather wallpaper, and a painted coved cornice depicting pastoral bird scenes. The Irving Room has painted medallions.

The picture gallery is top lit with patterned stained glass including a compass. A Corinthian screen marks the gallery entrance, and Corinthian doorcases with painted texts to openings form an enfilade. Tiled toilets and a former bathroom feature stencilled walls, a tiled dado, and a painted panel depicting a peacock, parrot and fruit.

The Display Space contains top-lit domes, one with stained glass depicting local landscapes by Sasha Ward. A circular opening to the second floor allows the dome to be seen from below. Floors are approached by a spiral stair in a glazed turret.

Lord and Lady Russell-Cotes made their fortune from the Royal Bath Hotel, Bournemouth. They travelled widely and collected extensively, building this house both to accommodate their collection and to entertain on a large scale. In 1908 they presented the house and contents to the Corporation of Bournemouth, though they retained the right to live there for their lifetime. Both had died by 1922, and the house and gallery opened to the public. It is a particularly complete example of middle-class aesthetic taste. The Display Space contains commissioned sculpture, stained glass and furniture by contemporary artists and designers, continuing the tradition of the original house.