Former Customs Watch House

Reasons for Designation

The Customs Watch House at the Western Docks, Dover is designated at Grade II for the following principal reasons: * It is a largely unaltered C20 reinterpretation of a key maritime building type. * The building strongly reflects the innovative and avant-garde work of its architect, Arthur Beresford Pite. * Group value within the Dover Harbour context with a number of designated assets.

Details

DOVER

685/0/10033 former Customs Watch House 16-DEC-09

II Customs Watch House. 1909, designed by Arthur Beresford Pite.

MATERIALS: Rough-tooled snecked ragstone with a base of coursed rough-faced granite blocks and dressed granite details. Cast iron casement windows and slate roof, with copper dome.

PLAN: Rectangular plan. Two storeys with four rooms off a corridor on each floor, and second floor belvedere. Central stair, two stacks to the south.

EXTERIOR: The building is in the Arts and Crafts style. The principal elevation is to the north, overlooking the entrance into the inner harbour. There are gable end parapets to the east and west. The central bay of the north elevation is defined by a broad, central gabled entrance bay with a canted oriel window with three six-paned lights, above which is the royal coat of arms carved in relief from stone blocks . The oriel is surmounted by an octagonal lantern with a domed copper roof. The stepped and heavily moulded base of the oriel forms the head of the deep door surround of the principal entrance. The double entrance doors are half-panelled with semicircular lights forming a complete roundel when closed. Keyed oculi flank the entrance door. The right-hand bay comprises keyed oculi to ground and first floor, the left-hand bay comprises a keyed oculus to first floor and a keyed Venetian window to ground floor. The east elevation comprises a pair of two-light mullioned windows with semi-circular keyed relieving arches at first floor, and a single keyed Venetian window to the ground floor. The first floor corners are chamfered with a rectangular light in each diagonal face. The south elevation has two irregular external stacks; one single, to the west, and one double, to the east. The east stack is pierced with a two-light mullioned window at ground and first floor. Between the stacks are four three-light mullioned windows, two at ground floor, two at first. There is a central keyed oculus. The west elevation comprises keyed oculus over two two-light mullioned windows. The building retains much of its original fabric, the only notable exception being the weather vane on the domed lantern roof.

INTERIOR: Internal layout largely unaltered, much of the modest joinery remains. Fireplaces have generally been removed. Central open-well stair with painted metal stick balusters and metal handrail. Dog-leg stair to lantern with timber stick balusters and square newel posts with ball finials.

HISTORY: Dover's original Customs House was on Custom House Quay, to the north west of Granville Dock. The date of this building is not known but it is identified on Ordnance Survey maps between 1866 and 1907. By 1937 the building had gone, but the name Custom House Quay survived.

It is likely that the original customs house was lost shortly after 1907, as the design for the new Customs Watch House is dated 1909.

During both the First and Second World Wars, the Port of Dover was under the control of the Navy and was the base for the Dover Patrol; a fleet of about 40 warships, motor boats and fishing vessels which kept control of the English Channel.

When the Second World War ended, the Navy was quick to relinquish its responsibility for the port, and had moved out by November 1946. The post-war period saw the Western Docks respond and adapt to the increasing demand for cross-channel services and changes in commercial shipping. With the Granville and Wellington Docks becoming too small to accommodate modern commercial shipping, this steadily gave way to marinas and leisure use, meaning the need for the Customs Watch House fell away. The Customs Watch House is now used as offices for an aggregates company based on the South Pier.

The Customs building was designed by Arthur Beresford Pite (1861-1934), architect and educator and son of the architect Alfred Robert Pite (1832-1911). Pite's architectural training was undertaken at University College and the Architectural Association in London. His accomplished Gothic design for a West End club house, for which in 1882 he won the Soane medallion of the Royal Institute of British Architects, brought him to the notice of the architectural profession at an early age. Between 1883 and 1897 Pite worked in the office of the London architect John Belcher, through whom he became involved with the Art-Workers' Guild (founded in 1884), later becoming its master. After 1900 much of Pite's time was spent teaching, becoming the first professor of architecture at the newly formed Royal College of Art. He also became architectural director of the School of Building in Brixton, a pioneering educational project which brought together architects, artists and builders, and from 1909 to 1931, was a member of the University of Cambridge Board of Architectural Studies.

The security that teaching offered allowed Pite to choose his projects carefully. He worked on an eclectic variety of building types and was regarded as experimental and avant-garde by his contemporaries. In comparison to other projects Pite was undertaking at this point in his career, such as Christ Church, Brixton (1907, listed Grade II*), and the massive London, Edinburgh and Glasgow insurance offices on Euston Square (1906-8), the building considered by many to be Pite's masterpiece, the Customs Watch House would have been a rather modest commission. However, he often chose projects which provided opportunities to establish new models for particular building types.

In his design for the Customs Watch House, Pite discarded convention to create an eclectic and idiosyncratic building. Dating from the most creative phase of Pite's career it is testament to his diverse and unconventional body of work.

SOURCES: A Stuart Gray, "Edwardian Architecture" (1985), p 285-289 English Heritage, "Dover Harbour, Notes on Historical and Engineering Interest" (2008) "Dover Terminal 2 Historic Environment Baseline Report", Maritime Archaeology Ltd (2008) Architectural drawings 7230, 1790, 1818, Dover Harbour Board Drawing Office B Hanson (ed), The Golden City: essays on the architecture and imagination of Beresford Pite (1993)

Reasons for Designation The Customs Watch House at the Western Docks, Dover is designated at Grade II for the following principal reasons: * It is an unusual, and architecturally distinguished, largely unaltered C20 reinterpretation of a key maritime building type. * The building strongly reflects the innovative and avant-garde work of its architect, Arthur Beresford Pite. * Group value within the Dover Harbour context with a number of designated assets.

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

507156

Legacy System:

LBS

End of official list entry

All text content is available under the Open Government Licence v3.0 , except where otherwise stated. Any supplied maps are © Crown Copyright [and database rights] 2026 OS AC0000815036 and may not be reproduced without permission.