Listed Building record MDO22554 - Old Fish Market, Custom House Quay, Weymouth

No.3, Old Fish Market. Market hall. c1855. Portland stone ashlar, Slate roof. A near-square plan with raised central clerestorey; the main front is on the Quay, and the return is in Maiden Street. One-storey front with arched openings over two 15-pane lights, and a central pair of part-glazed doors each with a radial fanlight over. The windows are on stone sills above aprons, recessed and with raised alternating jamb stones, with plain architrave above impost blocks, and with a prominent keystone carried up into a moulded eaves band; the door surround is the same, on one stone step. The front is framed in channelled pilasters, and with a plinth, impost band, and eaves moulding beneath a deep projecting flat eaves with exposed shaped rafter ends. The hipped lower roof rises to a central raised hipped clerestorey with vertical boarding, probably formerly louvred. The return to Maiden Street is in 2 bays, one door and one window, detailed as the main front.

INTERIOR: has a dropped C20 ceiling, and inserted brick piers, and the roof structure is not visible. There was formerly an ice room (Ricketts). A handsome building, characteristic of commercial enterprise in the earlier C19. (Ricketts E: The Buildings of Old Weymouth: Melcombe Regis and Westham: Weymouth: 1976-: 116). Listing NGR: SY6797978724 <1>

The Weymouth Commercial Icehouse, now Old Fish Market, situated on Weymouth quay (SY 67 78). The icehouse was combined with a fish market. In the 1990s the building was used as a grain store and fish shop. The building is of stone and has a slate roof with wide, overhanging eaves. It has been estimated that the store would have held at least 300 tons of ice in addition to its insulation. This is one of the few remaining commercial icehouses left in England. <2>

<1> Department of the Environment, 14 June 1974, List of Buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest: Borough of Weymouth and Portland 1974, 873-1 (Scheduling record). SWX1839.

<2> Ricketts, E, 1976, The Buildings of Old Weymouth: Melcombe Regis and Westham (Monograph). SDO19009.

<3> Ice-houses. English Heritage Monuments Protection Programme, Step 3 report Vol 1 (Unpublished document). SWX2492.

<4> National Record of the Historic Environment, 1540361 (Digital archive). SDO14739.

Record last edited

Dec 12 2022 3:26PM