Regiments Of Gloucestershire Museum

GLOUCESTER

SO8218SE COMMERCIAL ROAD 844-1/11/99 (South side) 12/03/73 No.31 Regiments of Gloucestershire Museum (Formerly Listed as: COMMERCIAL ROAD (South side) Custom House)

GV II

HM Custom and Excise Office, now museum. Completed 1845, by Sydney Smirke for the Customs Commissioners. Minor alterations c1985 for conversion as the Regiments of Gloucestershire Museum. Ashlar to front and sides, brick at rear, slate roof, brick stack. Symmetrical double-depth block; the C20 entrance to museum at rear is approached from the Docks. EXTERIOR: two storeys and basement. Symmetrical front to Commercial Road; offset plinth, raised bands at first floor and first-floor sill levels, crowning cornice and a coped parapet; at the outer corners between the plinth and the first-floor band, and between the first-floor sill band and the crowning cornice, are long raised and chamfered quoins. On the ground floor in the centre a porch of slight projection, the open front framed by pilasters and entablature with parapet above; flanking the porch on either side a sash with a further sash widely spaced to left and right in plain openings with projecting stone sills. On the first floor the same pattern of openings with three closely spaced sashes in the centre and a architraves and floating cornices. All the sashes with glazing bars (3x4 panes). Set above the centre of the parapet the royal arms carved in stone. Elevation at each end has three sashes on each floor with details are similar to the front. Rear elevation facing the Docks of brick, with late C20 glazed extension. INTERIOR: not inspected HISTORY: built in order to handle the great expansion of foreign trade passing through Gloucester Docks in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Listing NGR: SO8287518393