Gates, Gatepiers, Railings And Lamp Standards, The 'Main Gate', At Hms Ganges

1343/0/10005 07-FEB-05

SHOTLEY CALEDONIA ROAD Gates, gatepiers, railings and lamp standards, the 'Main Gate', at HMS Ganges

GV II

Gates and gatepiers with railings and lamp standards. 1905. Red brick piers with painted stone caps, wrought-iron carriage and pedestrian gates and also railings and lamp standards. The main carriage gates have uprights with scrolls at the top and then further cresting decoration. The piers to either side have caps and ornamental lamp standards. Further to either side are the pedestrian gates which also have scrolls and cresting decoration as well as the monogram of Edward VII. Then to either side are massive piers with caps from which extend curving walls with railings, that to the left with a further pier and gate.

HISTORY This was the 'Main Gate' for HMS Ganges, a Royal Naval Training Establishment 1905-76. The training of boys for the Navy became formalised in the mid-Victorian period and originally this took place on HMS Ganges, the last wooden-walled sea-going flagship which was firstly moored at Mylor, near Falmouth, and then at Shotley. The shore training establishment was built here in 1905 and it was also named HMS Ganges. Here the training of 15 and 16-year-old boys, some 2000 at any one time, continued until the school leaving age was raised in the 1970's. HMS Ganges finally closed in 1976 after some 150,000 boys had passed through these famous gates, 'leaving by the Main Gate' being the symbolic honourable departure from the establishment. All the boys had also regularly climbed the nearby Ceremonial Mast (q.v.) with which these gates form a significant group. As well as this considerable historic interest, these gates, of fine quality in themselves, have the added interest of the monogram of Edward VII, unusual because of His Majesty's short reign.