Berberis Boathouse / Wimshurst Pelleriti

Architects: Wimshurst Pelleriti
Location: Newton Ferrers, Plymouth, United Kingdom
Lead Architects: Will Wimshurst, Chris Worsfold
Area: 65.0 m2
Project Year: 2018
Photographs: Nick Kane

Main Contractor: Other participants: A.D. Williams Building Contractors Limited
Specialist Engineer And Hoist Supplier : Wise Handling Limited
Structural Engineer: PCA Consulting Engineers

Text description provided by the architects. Wimshurst Pelleriti has recently completed a new boathouse which lifts a 14 ft speedboat out of the water and stores it ready for a quick launch. Unusually, perhaps uniquely, the boat is stored in the specially designed eaves from where it is mechanically lowered 15 ft into the water, releasing the area below the boat for storage.

The challenging brief required a modern and sophisticated piece of infrastructure to be sensitively inserted into the steep sided estuary of the River Yealm in Devon. Located in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty with millennia old connection to UK maritime history, the area is highly protected and nothing can be built adjacent to the water without permission from a large variety of stakeholders.

The primary structure of Berberis Boathouse is galvanized steel with the skin of the building dressed in untreated Siberian larch, reflecting its woodland setting. Externally, the larch will silver over time creating a material dialogue with the structure. Internally, the timber will retain some of the golden warmth of its un-weathered state. A full-length roof light allows diffuse light into the main space and mezzanine deck while a series of sliding doors enable access from both land and water.

To facilitate the quick launch of the delicate but extremely heavy speedboat positioned 10 ft high in the eaves, Wimshurst Pelleriti began an extensive search to find a specialist boat handling firm, eventually entering into an intensive dialogue with WISE Handling who normally provide handling solutions for large dockyards. Will Wimshurst said “WISE were the only specialist firm that would agree to undertake the challenge – and this gave an insight into the uniqueness of the project. It was an exciting commission giving us the opportunity to use imagination and diverse skills, resulting in a truly innovative design which will have a positive impact on this romantic riverscape, and perhaps on the development of boathouses for this kind of riverbank scenario”.

Wimshurst Pelleriti’s client endorsed the practice’s approach and enthusiasm. “We gave Will and the team a really challenging brief. We wanted a boathouse in which we could store a myriad of water craft and WP’s innovative solution was to hoist the speedboat into the eaves to leave storage for the rest of the kit below. It’s been a journey since then, but now it’s completed, it’s a truly beautiful building that does all it set out to achieve. Without a doubt this building has transformed our experience of the river”.

The quayside approach to the boathouse has been carefully restored, taking cues from the village and is laid with reclaimed Cornish granite curbs and new setts that run up the tidal slipway and into the building. The building now sits proudly on the bank of the Yealm in conversation with the nearby listed ‘Baring Boathouse’, commissioned in 1880 by Edward Baring, 1st Baron Revelstoke.