The Admiralty and the Admiralty Screen

The Admiralty and Admiralty Screen are government offices built in the 18th century. The main building was constructed between 1723 and 1726 by Thomas Ripley, the Comptroller of the Works, while the Admiralty Screen dates from 1759 to 1761, representing innovative early work by Robert Adam.

The Admiralty itself is built of brown brick with Portland stone dressings and a slate roof. It is a classically designed building, situated between Baroque and Palladian styles, characterized by a large portico and an awkward, cramped feel. The building is U-shaped, with three main storeys and a dormered attic. It has a seven-window wide main block, with wings extending eight windows deep and two-window wide ends facing Whitehall. The central doorway is architraved and corniced, situated beneath a large Ionic portico with a pediment containing a carved cartouche bearing the Admiralty insignia. The windows are recessed glazing bar sashes, set within slightly cambered gauged brick arches. Other features include channelled stone quoins, a first floor sill band, a heavy entablature, and a parapet.

The Admiralty Screen, built in Portland stone, forms a monumental, Roman-inspired facade to the courtyard. A central carriage archway is framed by pylon-piers with parapets topped by sea horses. Flanking screens consist of Tuscan columns against blind walls supporting an entablature, terminating in slightly advanced, pedimented pavilions with blind niches. Carved reliefs of man-of-war prows, in the Roman rostral manner, decorate the pediments.

The interior of Ripley’s Admiralty—originally designed for residential accommodation for the Lord of the Admiralty alongside a board room and a few offices—contains several significant interiors. These include an entrance hall with coupled pilasters and a central niche housing a life-size model of the statue on Nelson’s Column by Baily, and a vaulted corridor (repeated on the first floor) with plasterwork panels reminiscent of Vanbrugh’s style. A staircase at the south end features stone steps and a wrought iron balustrade, lit by a glazed oval dome constructed between 1785 and 1787, concurrent with S.P. Cockerell’s work at Admiralty House next door. The Board Room likely incorporates a panelled interior from a previous Admiralty building dating to 1695, featuring richly carved fluted Corinthian pilasters supporting an enriched carved entablature. A marble chimney piece has a windcompass overmantel from around 1695, likely the work of Robert Norden, framed by superbly carved pendant trophies and garlands incorporating nautical instrument motifs, possibly carved by Grinling Gibbons. A coved plasterwork ceiling dates to 1789.