Number 11 Store (Building Number 1/59) Portsmouth, England

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SU 6200 NE MAIN ROAD (West side) HM Naval Base 774-1/17/217 No 11 Store (Building No 1/59)

GV I

Alternatively known as: Present Use Storehouse, MAIN ROAD HM NAVAL BASE Naval store, now museum, library and offices. 1763 by Templar, Parlby and Teniplar; restored after fire damage 1874 (Riley). 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. EXTERIOR: 3 storeys with cellar and attic, 13 x 3 bays. Ashlar plinth and 1st-floor band and sill band; stepped brick eaves band below plain ashlar cornice; coped parapet. Ground-floor openings (originally 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 cills (some cills replaced in concrete); flat-roofed attic dormers. Rainwater pipes with bulbous heads. North-east elevation: bays arranged 5:3:5 the centre projecting slightly below pediment with later clock; central panelled double door in eared architrave with tripartite keystone, flanked by windows. Doorways to other ground-floor bays, now windows, have round- arched ashlar surrounds with plinth blocks, imposts, and keystones rising into deep 1st-floor band. Rear: as north-east elevation, central2nd floor loading door with crane; oculus in pediment. Returns each have central entrance and loading door above, with double doors, fanlights with radial glazing bars and canti-levered landings to loading doors (that to left return now replaced by late C20 bridge providing link to No.10 Store (qv)); right return retains crane-housing. 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 (formerly trap doors on rear side). INTERIOR: cellar: transverse brick walls between bays carry round-arched brick vaults; passage along rear side. On floors above, square wooden columns support large-scantling cross-beams and joists; wide wooden floorboards; ground floor reconstructed as museum gallery but retaining some old floorboards including some reused ships' timbers. Some of the 1st and 2nd floor rooms board-lined, the eaves boards with flower-like vents. Original heavy central wooden stair rising from ground floor to attic has open well, closed string, shallow treads, turned balusters, square newels with moulded caps and broad moulded handrail (a more decorative stair than those in the slightly- later No.9 and No.10 Stores, qqv). Roof board-lined with braced queen-post trusses of large-scantling timbers. HISTORY: one of three large stores (with Nos 9 and 10 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 & Industrial Buildings in Portsmouth: Portsmouth: 1985: 7, 10).

Listing NGR: SU6299200361