Royal Arsenal Rifle Shell Factory Gateway

TQ 4479 PLUMSTEAD ROAD SE18 (North side)

786/9/362 Royal Arsenal Rifle Shell Factory Gateway 08/06/73

GV II

Rifle shell foundry entrance gateway, offices and stores. 1856 by D Murray. Red brick with Portland stone dressings and a slate roof. Baroque Revival style. 2 storey; 3-window range. A fine entrance has paired Doric and superimposed Ionic columns to each bay, entablature and panelled parapet set forward to the columns; keyed round archways with architraves, larger to the middle, with fine elaborate cast-iron gates by Charles Bailey, 1857, cast at Grissel's Regent's Canal Iron Works. Round-arched keyed first-floor windows with stone pilasters, impost blocks and moulded architraves, and a central first-floor Venetian window. Returns have first-floor round-arched windows as the front. INTERIOR: not inspected. HISTORY: Formed the entrance to a large ammunition factory. A fine and well-detailed Baroque composition, in a style usually associated with the early C20. Part of the mid C19 expansion of the iron ordnance production facility at the Arsenal. (RCHME report, 1994)

Listing NGR: TQ4404079210