Fleetwood Customs House (Fleetwood Museum)

Fleetwood's customs house dates from 1836. Its architect, Decimus Burton, laid out the new seaside town and designed its main buildings between 1836 and 1843. The customs house first stood on its own, with ornamental gardens at the sides and rear; a boarding house, Wyre Holm, was later built onto its northern end.

From the 1890s it served as offices for the local council, and it became the town hall once Fleetwood gained municipal borough status, in 1933. Fleetwood Museum, started in the early 1970s as a collection on the town's past kept in the former library on Dock Street, moved here in 1991.

The museum's closure was announced in 2015. In April 2018 a charity, Fleetwood Museum Trust, took over the running of the building and the care of the collections on behalf of Lancashire County Council; the museum reopened that year, run by local volunteers and backed by the townspeople through the town council.

A repainting of the front, begun at the end of 2018, uncovered the original render of 1837 beneath ten layers of paint. Conservation specialists took off the modern coatings and repaired the render, then applied a paint that keeps water out while letting the wall breathe. By March 2021 the restored front was clear of its scaffolding.

When it was listed at Grade II, on 31 March 1978, the building had two storeys and a roughcast front with eight bays of sash windows. The three northern bays projected forward; the five southern bays had moulded surrounds, topped on the ground floor by moulded cornices.

Two Tuscan porches with full entablatures marked the entrance. The northern one had square columns and closed sides; the southern one had round columns and open sides fitted with cast-iron railings. Steps led up to the porches between cast-iron railings with spear finials, which ran across the whole front.

A moulded cornice ran below the eaves, with a blocking course above it. Over the southern part, an elaborate ornamental iron cresting carried finials at the corners.

The window surrounds, the entrance columns and the parapets at the top of the front are cut from the same stone as the nearby North Euston Hotel. The mosaic floor of the entrance hall goes back to the building's beginnings.

The building houses Fleetwood Museum, a local history museum. Its galleries cover the deep-sea trawlers, the gathering of shrimps, cockles and mussels, the growth of the docks, the lifeboats and the part trawlers played in the Second World War; others recreate a salt mine and the dining room of a Victorian boarding house. The boat hall at the rear shows Harriet, a fishing smack built in 1893 at the Singleton Bros. yard in Fleetwood and part of the National Historic Fleet.

A café, Sir Peter's Coffee House, and a shop can be used without paying museum admission.

The museum is at 6-7 Queen's Terrace, Fleetwood (FY7 6BT), overlooking the River Wyre. Accompanied children go in free.

The historic layout of this listed building makes some parts hard to reach, so the museum asks visitors who may be affected to contact it before coming. Groups can ask for a tailored visit in the daytime or after closing, and schools can book sessions at any time of year.