The Old Custom House

The Old Custom House is a house that was later used as a Customs House and is now a public house. It was built in 1695 and remodeled with rear additions in the early and mid 19th century. The building features solid rendered walls and a slate roof, with a rendered chimney on the rear wall. It has two storeys with a garret and a four-window range, with a doorway replacing the second ground-storey window on the front left. The windows have shaped surrounds and are sashes with margin-panes. There is a raised band above the ground storey and three gabled dormers with pierced, patterned bargeboards, also featuring sashes with margin-panes. The gable-end facing The Quay includes a two-storeyed, three-light bay window with rounded corners and a top entablature, with sashes that have glazing-bars. The garret window matches those on the Bridgeland Street front, and the gable is decorated with three ball-finials. At the rear, there is a rounded stair turret with a round-arched window containing an 18-pane fixed sash with radial bars at the top. Flanking the turret are additions with late 20th-century slate-hanging. To the right, facing the Ropewalk, is a former warehouse; the ground storey has been altered, but the upper storey retains a 19th-century loading door flanked by sash windows with margin-panes. The interior was only inspected on the ground storey, which has been completely altered. The rear staircase features thin, square-section balusters. A lease from Bideford Bridge Trust dated 20 May 1695 granted the newly erected house on this site to Nathaniel Gascoyne, a carpenter who laid out Bridgeland Street in 1690. A lease from 1832 indicates the building was then used as the Custom House, although it was no longer used for this purpose by 1890.