Royal Arsenal The Board Room

The Board Room, Royal Arsenal

This Board Room was built between 1718 and 1720 for the Board of Ordnance, with an extension added around 1741. The building is attributed to both Sir John Vanbrugh and Nicholas Hawksmoor. It originally served as the Board Room for Officers of the Ordnance Board and housed the Cadets' Training Academy. Later it became a pattern room for the Royal Military Academy and subsequently an officers' mess.

The building is constructed of red brick with a slate hipped roof and features rear lateral stacks. Its plan comprises a single-depth layout containing the Board Room to the north and the Academy to the south, with a rear stair tower enclosed by the circa 1741 extension.

The exterior presents a symmetrical front of two storeys with a seven-window range, expanded by a three-storey section with attic and a six-window rear wing. The façade displays a projecting central pedimented entrance bay with a ground-floor porch featuring banded jambs, a shallow-arched lintel, and a deeply-set doorway with a 20th-century door. Above this sits a tall round arch with a plain balcony, flanked by round plinths bearing lion and unicorn figures. A recessed round-arched window with a clock sits beneath an impost band, with small oculi either side of a wind dial and an iron weather vane crowning the pediment. The outer sections feature tall round-arched sashes with six-pane glazing on each side and oculi above. The left end contains a single ground-floor window and two oculi with a raised central parapet section. The right end displays a full-height header bond bow with raised parapet, three round-arched windows and flat-headed raised panels above each. The rear extension of six windows has segmental-arched windows, gables and a parapet.

The interior includes an entrance hall with stone and slate flooring, flanked by round-arched eight-panel doors with panelled fanlights and panelled reveals. A rear dogleg stair features stick balusters, an uncut string, and a moulded rail. The right-hand full-height former Academy Room is lined with oak panelling and moulded skirting, has a flagged floor and a substantial stone fireplace with architrave, consoles and cornice. The left-hand Board Room contains an inserted floor spanning a 18th-century grisaille wall painting of trophies, with a matching fireplace.

Historically, the building was erected on the site of Tower Place, the original residence of the Lieutenant General of Ordnance purchased by the Crown in 1671 and subsequently used as the office of the Board of Ordnance. From 1741, the left-hand room served the Royal Military Academy until its relocation to Woolwich Common in 1806, after which it functioned as a model or pattern room for foundry patterns. The lion and unicorn figures likely came from the former gateway into the Royal Laboratory yard.

The building represents a robust and strongly-articulated work characteristic of the early 18th-century Baroque manner associated with the Ordnance Board under Vanbrugh and Hawksmoor, and holds considerable historic significance for its connections with both the Board of Ordnance and the early Royal Military Academy. Vanbrugh was associated with the Arsenal's early expansion following the Board of Ordnance's establishment of gun founding on the site in 1716.