Exeter City Council

11426.0

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Description:  The Custom House was built by the city in 1680-81 to provide accommodation for the Customs on the Quay at Exeter, and also for the Wharfinger, the city official who collected city dues. The building is now one of the earliest surviving brick buildings in the city (although other, earlier, buildings have been demolished). It was built to a design commissioned from Richard Allen, and otherwise unknown architect; it originally consisted of a five-bay front, of two storeys, with an open arcade at the ground floor level, and the main entrance set back from the façade (Celia Fiennes commented that this served to store unloaded goods out of the wet (Morris 1947, 248). The bricks were of poor quality, with marked variation in colour, texture and quality of firing, and orange bricks were apparently selected for the front elevation, as those of the side and rear elevations are markedly browner and of poorer quality; dressings, the plat band, the arch voussoirs, and quoins were of Beer stone, and the modillion cornice was of timber. The windows at the front were replaced by sashes in the 18th century, but original mullioned and transomed windows survive in the rear elevation. To either side was a recessed bay, with hipped gable onto the main frontage, that to the west accommodating a warehouse, that to the east the Wharfinger’s House. Attached to the building to the west, beyond the recessed bay, was another warehouse, built at the same time, although with separate access; this shares many details of construction with the Custom House and the Quay House to the south east. Although the symmetry of this design was quickly obscured by the filling in of the eastern half of the arcade in 1684-5, and by the bringing forward of the façade of the eastern recessed bay in an extension to the Wharfinger’s House in 1711, some idea of the original elevation is preserved in a view of the building in one corner of Coles’ map of Exeter of 1709 (REN 4329). The regularity of the façade, in fact, obscures an irregular and awkward site, trapezoidal in plan, with the narrower depth to the east. This probably came about because the Custom House was built on top of a pre-existing boundary wall at the rear of the quay, but the designer wished his façade to face more squarely onto the main area of the quay. The trapezoidal site led to an irregular internal plan, and most spectacularly, to a roofing arrangement which used three parallel hipped roofs to the rear (five if the recessed end bays are included), bearing on a long roof along the façade. Inside the ground-floor rooms were used as secure bonded cellars; until the building was vacated by HM Customs and Excise in 1989, the eastern cellar contained a massive set of scales; the western cellar still has a brick-vaulted sump, colloquially called the King’s pipe (supposedly as it was used for the burning of contraband), but more prosaically, probably a sump for pouring away liquid. The entrance hall between the cellars gives access to a grand stair, with turned balusters, and pulvinated string. This gives access to the main rooms on the first floor: the long room, overlooking the Quay, the surveyor’s room to the east, and further offices beyond and to the rear. The long room was memorably described by Celia Fiennes, again: ‘a large room, full of desks and little partitions for the writers and accountants; it was full of books and files of paper’ (Morris 1947, 248). The stair hall, the long room and the surveyor’s room each have elaborate plaster ceilings. One of the few documented (as opposed to the many attributed) works of John Abbott of Frithelstock (Cherry and Pevsner 1989, 426; Allan in Cooper (ed.) 1990, 51). Abbot was paid £35 by the city chamber for his work on the ceilings in 1681 (almost double his estimate, and despite a resolution of the chamber that the cost should not exceed £20). Later alterations, other than those early 18th-century additions mentioned already were remarkable few (although the eastern bay, containing the Wharfinger’s House suffered very badly in the 1960s and 70s from government-issue refurbishment, and as a result preserves almost no original fittings or finishes). Other significant additions were the filling in of the western half of the arcade in the early 19th century, and the addition of the present Royal Arms top the pediment in 1820 (it is possible that the very fine carving of the arms of Queen Anne which were formerly displayed in the long room, and are now in the collection of the RAM Museum [REN 3722], originally ornamented the pediment). Sources: The best account of the building remains the brief description by John Allan in Cooper (ed.) 1990, 50-52. Baldwin gives an exhaustive analysis of the decorative plasterwork and its sources and parallels in his forthcoming paper; Abbot is also discussed by Thorp in Beacham (ed.) 1990, 139-43). There are also brief accounts of the building in Cherry and Pevsner 1989, 426; Meller 1989, 31-2; and DoE 1974, 215 and amendment dated 12.iii.1991). An summary account of observations in 1991-2 was published in Post-Medieval Archaeology (Ponsford 1993, 225-6), and in EAAC 9.x.1992, 18-19. Crocker made a drawing of the ceiling of the Long Room (Crocker 1886, Pl. 37). Monitoring of new drainage trenches within the building took place during interior refurbishment works in 2000. The main item observed was a cobbled surface in the loggia area and to the south of the building that must represent the original surface of the quay and open loggia on the south front of the building at the time of its construction in 1680-81. When the loggia was enclosed, and the front door of the building was moved out to the line of the frontage, the ground was made up within and a stone flagged surface was laid (as surviving). Original description, SRB 12.xii.00; updated 15.v.03.

Extant: Yes

Country:  England

County:  Devon

District:  Exeter

Parish:  Exeter

Grid Reference:   SX919921

Map Reference:  [EPSG:27700] 291976, 92147

Period:  1650 - 1750, CIVIL WAR TO THE INUDSTRIAL REVOLUTION

Subject:  CUSTOM HOUSE

Identifiers: 
[ADS] Depositor Id: 11426.0
[ADS] Import RCN: ECHER11-11426.0

People Involved: 
[Publisher] Exeter City Council

Bibliographic References: 

• Ponsford, M. (1993) 'Devon: Exeter, The Custom House', pp. 225-26 in 'Post-Medieval Britain in 1992' in Post-Medieval Archaeol. 27, pg(s)205-96. Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology.
• Thomas, P. (1995) The Changing Face of Exeter, p. 46. Stroud.
• Exeter Museums Archaeological Field Unit (1992) Report to Exeter Archaeological Advisory Committee, 9.10.92, pp. 18-19; 21. Exeter City Council.
• Courtney-Selous, H. (unknown)
• Jenkins, A. (1806) The History and Description of the city of Exeter and its environs ancient and modern, p. 179. Exeter.
• Allan, J.P., & Juddery, J.Z. (1990) Exeter Custom House: Expenditure recorded in Exeter city archives 1678-1800 in EMAFU Report No. 90.06. Exeter Museums Archaeological Field Unit.
• Department of the Environment (1991) List of Buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest: District of Exeter (Amendments 28 and 29). Department of the Environment.