Number 10 Store (Building Number 1/58) Portsmouth, England

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SU 6200 SE MAIN ROAD (West side) HM Naval Base 774-1/18/215 No 10 Store (Building No 1/58)

GV I

Naval store, now museum. 1776 by Templar, Parlby and Templar (Riley), bomb damaged c1940, restoration work c1991. Red brick, with some glazed blue headers, in English bond; ashlar dressings. Flat-topped mansard slate roof with lead top. PLAN: rectangular plan with central ground-floor entry and stair. 3 storeys with cellar and attic, 13 x 3 bays. EXTERIOR: ashlar plinth and 1st-floor band and sill band; stepped brick eaves band below plain ashlar cornice; coped parapet. Ground-floor doorways have round-arched ashlar surrounds with keystones rising into 1st-floor band, plinth blocks and imposts. Windows: are 18-pane sashes, 12-pane to 2nd floor, with gauged bright-red brick flat arches and ashlar sills (some sills replaced in concrete); flat-roofed attic dormers. Rainwater pipes with square heads. North-east elevation: bays arranged 5:3:5, the centre projecting slightly below pediment with oculus and surmounted by 1992 replica clock tower cupola re-using clock faces, ball finial and weather-vane. To centre, large round archway in rusticated ashlar surround with imposts, the voussoirs aligned to courses, and with modillion cornice; flanking windows, that on left replaced by entrance; doorways to other bays in round-arched ashlar surrounds with plinth blocks, imposts and keystones rising into deep 1st-floor band. Rear: as north-east elevation. Above archway, on 2nd floor, is loading door with crane; and a lunette with radial glazing bars to pediment. The ground floor doorways have replacement double board doors and fanlights with decorative glazing bars. Returns each have central entrance and loading door above, with double doors and fanlights with radial glazing bars. Building surrounded by raised pavement of granite slabs carried on iron arches at front and brick plinth at rear, with iron grilles above cellar windows at front and trap doors at rear (mostly now all replaced by grilles). INTERIOR: cellar: transverse brick walls between bays carry round-arched brick walls; passage along rear side. On ground floor, central through passage has an entrance on each side with double board doors, fanlight with decorative glazing bars, and tooled ashlar architrave with imposts and keystone. On each floor, square wooden columns support large- scantling cross-beams and joists; wide wooden floorboards, some being reused ships' timbers; much of the woodwork of south-east half of 1st floor and of 2nd floor replaced. Original heavy wooden stair rising from ground to 1st floor has open well, shallow treads, widely-spaced large- scantling plain balusters, square newels with moulded caps and broad handrail. Roof board-lined and with braced queen-post trusses of large- scantling timbers, the south-eastern half of the building having attic and roof rebuilt 1991-92. The bells and clock in the cupola are C19 (clock dated 1878 and made by Gillet and Bland, Team Clock Factory, Croydon), brought from a Bristol School (possibly Bristol Grammar School). HISTORY: one of three large stores (with Nos 9 and 11 qqv) forming a notably fine group. Much of the Georgian yard was taken up with stores, and these are the most architecturally distinguished surviving examples in any of the naval yards. Sources: Coad J: The Royal Dockyards 1690-1850: Aldershot: 1989: 132-136 ; The Buildings of England: Lloyd D: Hampshire and the Isle of Wight: Harmondsworth: 1985: 410; The Portsmouth Papers: Riley RC: The Evolution of the Docks and Industrial Buildings in Portsmouth: Portsmouth: 1985: 7, 10).

Listing NGR: SU6299200361