Police Offices (Former Dock Entrance Gatehouse N 223) And Attached Wall

This is a former dock entrance gatehouse, now police offices, dating from 1854 and designed by William Scamp, Assistant Director of the Admiralty Works Department. The building is constructed of limestone ashlar, with granite dressings, and has a slate hipped roof. It is built in a Free Italianate style.

The building has a double-depth plan with a square plan tower to the south. The exterior consists of an 8-bay range and a 3-storey, 3-bay right-hand range. The west front is irregular; it features a 4-stage, square clock tower set 3 bays from the right, with the upper storey set back. The second bay from the left projects forward, featuring a steep swept French Empire-style roof with three round dormers each side and iron finials. The left-hand bay is also set back. The ground floor has a round-arched arcade with an impost band, moulded architraves, and keys, with doorways and half-glazed doors in the projecting left-hand bay. The south tower of the right-hand side has full-height recesses with a corbel table and bands to each floor, architraves to casement windows, a modillion cornice and balustrade. The clock tower above the sunken panel with paired oculi has an ogee leaded roof with small louvred dormers, the top section raised by a blind timber band. A panelled parapet sits above the middle section, with flat-headed windows to the upper floor. The projecting entrance bay features a first-floor 3-light mullion window and panelled apron, while the end bay has three narrow first-floor windows and a cill band. Horned plate glass sashes are used throughout. The frontage along the road is more plainer, with blocked windows on the ground and first floors.

The interior is characterised by plain offices and an axial corridor.

The dock perimeter wall extends approximately 350 metres to the north, incorporating interval pilaster buttresses.

Historically, this gatehouse was one of a pair of gatehouses at right angles to one another, linked by a curved screen wall and gates that formed the entrance to the North Steam Yard. The other gatehouse was demolished in the 1960s. The building is listed for its architectural interest and group value, alongside other buildings designed by Scamp, such as the Quadrangle, as part of the expansion of the steam dockyard.