Number 9 Store (Building Number 1/35)

This is a naval store, built in 1782 by Templar, Parlby and Templar (Riley). Constructed of red brick in English bond, with ashlar dressings, it is located on the west side of the Main Road within the HM Naval Base. The building is a rectangular structure with a central ground-floor entry and stair. It has three main storeys, a cellar, and an attic, measuring 13 bays by 3 bays.

The exterior features an ashlar plinth, a band at first-floor level, and a sill band. Stepped brick eaves are topped by a plain ashlar cornice and a coped parapet. Ground-floor doorways have round-arched ashlar surrounds with keystones that extend up into the first-floor band, along with plinth blocks and imposts. Windows are 18-pane sashes, with 12-pane sashes on the second floor, all featuring gauged bright-red brick flat arches and ashlar sills. The roof is a mansard slate with a leaded top, and includes flat-roofed attic dormers. Rainwater pipes have bulbous heads. The north-east elevation is arranged in bays of 5:3:5, with a central projection below a pediment featuring an oculus. A blocked central entrance is surrounded by an architrave with a tripartite keystone, flanked by windows. Additional ground-floor bays have double doors, decorative fanlights with glazing bars, and round-arched ashlar surrounds with plinth blocks, imposts, and keystones rising into the deep first-floor band. The rear elevation mirrors the north-east, but the ground-floor openings on the right-hand side have been bricked up. Returns feature a central entrance and loading door above, complete with double doors, fanlights with radial glazing bars, cantilevered landings to the loading doors (the left-side landing now removed), and housings for cranes. A raised pavement of granite slabs, supported by iron arches at the front and a brick plinth at the rear, surrounds the building. Iron grilles are positioned above the cellar windows, which originally served as trap doors on the rear side.

The cellar contains transverse brick walls between bays, supporting round-arched brick vaults; a passage runs along the rear side. Above, square wooden columns support large-scantling cross-beams and joists, with wide wooden floorboards. Some original woodwork on the first floor has been replaced. The central wooden stair, rising from ground to second floor, has an open well, closed-string, shallow treads, wide-spaced plain balusters, square newels, and a broad handrail. The roof is board-lined and incorporates braced queen-post trusses of large-scantling timbers.

This store is the last of three large stores (alongside numbers 10 and 11) forming a notable group. Much of the Georgian yard was once occupied by stores, and these surviving examples are the most architecturally distinguished in any of the naval yards.