Former Storehouse Number 3 and Former Chain Cable Store

Warehouse. Built between 1773 and 1783. The building is constructed of brick with stone dressings and has a slate hipped roof. It is a rectangular, single-depth structure.

The exterior is three storeys high with a basement, and incorporates attics across three sections. The fenestration is a 3:13:5:13:3-window range. A symmetrical block features taller end and central sections, with a ground-floor plat band, a cornice, and overhanging eaves. The central three-window section of the middle block is set forward. The three-storey sections have the central three bays projecting, and hoist bays are located in the middle of the outer five-bay sections, with double doors and braced iron pivot hoists to the side of the top doors. The windows are 8/8-pane sashes on the first floor, and 4/8-pane sashes on the second floor, all with rubbed brick flat arches. The end returns have single round-arched hoist bays with double doors and a top 5-light lunette. A single-storey lean-to extension, used as a Chain Cable store, runs along the east side, featuring former iron cannon used as piers and timber Y-braces. A mid-to-late 19th-century corrugated iron gabled roof, with bifurcated iron struts to the trusses, is located at the north end of the east side. This roof is linked to the west wall of the Ropery.

The interior is divided into a series of three-bay timber frames using particularly heavy timbers, with tin-lined ceilings and double, solid, cast-iron panelled doors between firebreak walls. Trap doors are positioned in front of the hoist doors.

Historically, at nearly 700 feet in length, this is the largest storehouse ever built in Britain, and represents one of the most significant examples of industrial warehousing in Europe, comparable to Storehouse No.2 and surviving structures at Portsmouth naval dockyard. It was used for storing rigging and predates the large 19th-century warehouse constructions in London’s docks. Originally, the lower sections featured pediments in the centre. The building was constructed during the extensive late 18th-century rebuilding of the dockyard, and forms a fine group of Georgian naval dockyard buildings when viewed alongside the northern warehouse and the Ropery.