Listed Building: (467442)

WEYMOUTH SY6878NW CUSTOM HOUSE QUAY 873-1/24/64 (North side) 14/06/74 No.11 (Formerly Listed as: CUSTOMS HOUSE QUAY Seamen's Institute) GV II Shown on OS map as Youth Centre. Sailors' Bethel (Ricketts), later Seamen's Institute, and Royal Dorset Yacht Club, now club and restaurant. Opened June 1866. Dark grey brick in Flemish bond, painted stone trim, slate roof. PLAN: a long narrow building, with modelled gable to the Quay, at an angle to the party walls; the gable conceals a roof of lower pitch behind. EXTERIOR: 2 storeys, with gabled facade containing stepped triple blind round-arched opening with small open oculi, under continuous stepped label course, above 5 vertical deep-set lights in an arcade with slender three-quarter colonnettes to plain flush arches under a continuous stepped label, and on a full-width sill band. Ground floor is triple-arched, with a pair of glazed doors under plain fanlight to the left, a central pair of plank doors with fanlight, and a plain light to the right, all to a flush band and arches with continuous stepped label and stopped ends. Stone plinth, a deep sill band to the bottom floor, and the whole front is contained in brick pilaster quoins carrying a deep moulded gable cornice with leaf enrichment. Rear wall is of brick, under a hipped roof, with 2 small 3-light small-pane casements at the eaves, and a large flat-roofed extension INTERIOR: has one large space at the ground floor, with some later partitions, and with lightweight banded cast-iron columns with palmette capitals to bracketed heads, in 2 rows. A straight flight openwork iron stair to the left rises to the open first floor with a deep coved ceiling containing a series of central cast-iron vents, plus access hatches. HISTORICAL NOTE: a 1903 photograph inside refers to it as the Seamen's Bethel; an advertisement of 1866 states: 'The Committee of the Weymouth Sailors' Society have long felt the importance of obtaining a more suitable place for the holding of Religious Services than that which is at present occupied as a Bethel. They have at length through the kindness of Sir F Johnstone Bart., secured, free of cost, a most eligible site on the Quay, together with the premises at present standing on it and known as the Old Baths.' The advertisement goes on to seek the sum of £700, for a '... plain but neat Bethel, with a Reading Room...'. In vaguely Venetian mode, this makes a bold statement on the quayside. Except for some later lightweight partitioning, the interior appears unaltered. (Ricketts E: The Buildings of Old Weymouth: Melcombe Regis and Westham: Weymouth: 1976-: 119). Listing NGR: SY6808078752

Record last edited

Oct 6 2009 11:57AM