The Boathouse

The Boathouse

A warehouse dating from the early 19th century, now disused, located on Brunswick Wharf in Barnstaple. The building is constructed of slatestone rubble with dressings of squared stone, including yellow and red brick, and is roofed with slates and blue glazed ridge-tiles. It is a two-storey structure of oblong plan with one room on each floor, featuring four-window ranges to the north and south and a single-window gable wall to the west.

The east gable wall contains the most notable feature: a tall, round-headed doorway in the upper storey with well-cut stone jambs and a yellow brick arch with keystone springing from plain imposts. The original double doors, consisting of diagonally-set planks with beaded edges, survive. Lower doors rise to impost level and are hinged at the sides, while a second pair in the head of the arch are hinged from a central post. A later wicket door has been cut into the right-hand lower door, and an old iron hoist is fixed to the right-hand jamb. The left side of this doorway is approached by a flight of steps, with the lowest four steps solid brick and the next four of cantilevered stone blocks, later underpinned in concrete block with a twentieth-century platform and double doors added to the ground storey. The original ground-storey entrance behind retains well-cut stone jambs rebated for doors, of which the iron hinges survive.

The south front shows five low, blocked openings in the ground storey with curved, almost pointed arches of red brick, with a sixth opening at the west end later modified by a twentieth-century door. The upper storey has four windows below the eaves, three of them blocked; the second from the east is boarded, with a rough window-frame and old iron grille behind. Between and flanking the windows are fifteen slate-framed pigeon-holes, two retaining original slate perches. A blocked doorway with segmental red brick arch stands at the right-hand end.

The north front, standing immediately on the edge of the quay, features windows with segmental red brick arches—two in the centre of the ground storey and four in the upper storey. The second upper-storey window from the east has a wooden louvre with an old iron grille behind. Two wide doorways with segmental red brick arches flank the ground-storey windows; the eastern is blocked while the western has an old plank door. Both originally extended down to a lower quay surface. The quay wall below is supported by three large, raking stone buttresses. The west gable-wall has a window with segmental red brick arch in both the upper storey and gable; the upper-storey window has an old iron grille. The shadow of a later stone building, now demolished, is visible against the north side of the ground storey; this is recorded in old photographs and a mid-nineteenth-century painting.

Internally, the upper floor contains plain, heavy beams. Four roof trusses feature tie-beams, collar-beams and vertical struts from tie to principal; all timbers appear to be nailed rather than pegged, with struts bolted from below. John Wood's plan of 1843 shows a building in this position, complete with a westward extension. Brunswick Wharf was built by the Gould family on a town lease about 1829 and remained in their hands throughout the nineteenth century.