Custom House And Attached Rear Area Wall And Piers

BRISTOL

ST5872NE QUEEN SQUARE 901-1/16/219 (North side) 04/03/77 Custom House and attached rear area wall and piers (Formerly Listed as: QUEEN SQUARE (North side) The Custom House)

GV II*

Customs house. 1836. By Sidney Smirke. Limestone ashlar, ridge and party wall stacks, roof not visible. Double-depth plan. Neoclassical style. 2 storeys, attic and basement; 5-window range. A symmetrical front has a plinth to a sill band, plat band, first-floor sill band and impost band, frieze and bracketed cornice, and parapet with raised dies. Banded ground floor, rusticated quoins on the first floor. A large doorway has paired pilasters to an entablature, with a plinth above with raised ends, and a carving of the Royal Coat of Arms; 9-pane overlight and 2-leaf 4-panel door, with an inner 2-leaf 6-panel door with glazed round central panels. 6/6-pane ground-floor sashes, and tall semicircular-arched first-floor windows with moulded archivolts, to 6/9-pane sashes. Right-hand return has 3-window range, with 3/3-pane attic sashes set below the cornice, and basement windows with grille to pavement lights. Rear has projecting right-hand section, and gabled left-hand with semicircular-arched windows. INTERIOR: traces in basement of the early C18 house destroyed in the riots, with tooled Pennant walls and timbers, and security doors. Also a C19 range and cast-iron fireplace. Central top-lit stair well has c1950 open-well stair; principal first-floor room has 2 large acanthus ceiling roses, cornice, and doorway with consoles to a pediment; dogleg winder service stair to the attic has stick balusters and column newels; doorways with panelled reveals and soffits, and 6-panel doors. SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: attached rusticated Pennant ashlar walls and piers to rear area. Replaced the Custom House destroyed in the Reform Bill riots of 1831. (Gomme A, Jenner M and Little B: Bristol, An Architectural History: Bristol: 1979-: 237).

Listing NGR: ST5878472650