Seaway House

Seaway House is a three-storey block incorporating Free Classical, French Renaissance, and Dutch influences, dating to the early 20th century. It was originally constructed as Dock Chambers. The building is primarily red brick with a Bath stone ground floor facing and dressings, featuring channelled pilaster strips and gable parapets. The ground floor has thin cement stacks with cornices to the front and rear. The facade is gently stepped, composed of repeated sections of five bays, with an advanced central bay crowned by a steep, French-style roof and an elaborate dormer. Each section is defined by channelled pilaster strips. The building is notable for its shaped gables at the centre of each group of five bays, flanked by a pierced parapet that retains urn finials on the left side, along with pendants (finials now missing) and circular attic windows. Most windows are four-pane sashes; the central block has tripartite windows, including a pedimented cornice to the first floor and flanking blind ovals in a 17th-century style, decorated with draped festoons. The second floor has bracket sills set into a stone band course. There is a stringcourse and vermiculated voussoirs to the first floor, and a deep frieze band to the ground floor. Central windows and entrances within each five-bay section have enriched ornamentation above the cornices, with round-arched doorways, keystones, pilasters, and panelled double doors. Original ground floor windows are segmental, except for those in the central block, which are semicircular.

Alterations to the right-hand end include the addition of a grander bank frontage, extended one bay beyond the corner, at a single storey, featuring a pedimented Tuscan Doric entrance, channelled pilasters, modillion cornices and a high granite plinth. The left-hand half has undergone more significant alterations, including a garage door entry piercing the extreme left end and the removal of scrolled ornament from the windows. However, the inner five-bay section on this side has been given a Grecian Classical treatment, incorporating surrounds to a shop window, a vehicular entrance, and a central entrance with an anthemion finial, egg and dart, and fretwork ornament, as well as panelled doors with a latticed overlight. The rear elevation has similar but simpler detailing, with four- and five-window sections flanking a central projection. The right-hand end features twin gables and a central chimney. A flat roofed, open-plan extension is present at the rear, internally supported by iron Doric columns.

Internally, Dock Chambers has open-well staircases with ironwork balustrades, bulbous newels, and scrolled handrails. The interior features panelled doors and reveals, with round-arched and segmental architraves. A ground floor front room in No. 4 has a plaster frieze, fluted columns to the chimneypiece, and panelled shutters.