Custom House And Attached Rear Area Wall And Piers

The Custom House, built in 1836 by Sidney Smirke, is a customs house located in Queen Square, Bristol. It is designed in a Neoclassical style and constructed from limestone ashlar. The building features a double-depth plan, two storeys, an attic, and a basement, with a symmetrical front that includes a plinth, sill bands, a frieze, a bracketed cornice, and a parapet with raised dies. The ground floor is banded, and the first floor has rusticated quoins.

A prominent large doorway is flanked by paired pilasters and topped with an entablature, featuring a plinth with raised ends and a carving of the Royal Coat of Arms. The doorway includes a 9-pane overlight and a two-leaf, four-panel door, with an inner two-leaf, six-panel door that has glazed round central panels. The ground floor has 6/6-pane sashes, while the first floor features tall semicircular-arched windows with moulded archivolts and 6/9-pane sashes.

The right-hand return has a three-window range with 3/3-pane attic sashes below the cornice, and basement windows with grilles for pavement lights. The rear of the building has a projecting right-hand section and a gabled left-hand section with semicircular-arched windows.

Inside, there are traces in the basement of an early 18th-century house that was destroyed during the riots, featuring tooled Pennant walls and timbers, along with security doors. There is also a 19th-century range and a cast-iron fireplace. The central top-lit stairwell has a 1950s open-well stair. The principal first-floor room boasts two large acanthus ceiling roses, a cornice, and a doorway with consoles leading to a pediment. A dogleg winder service stair to the attic has stick balusters and column newels, with doorways featuring panelled reveals and soffits, and six-panel doors.

The property is complemented by attached rusticated Pennant ashlar walls and piers at the rear area. This building replaced the original Custom House that was destroyed in the Reform Bill riots of 1831.