Hms Excellent: Quarterdeck Block (Buildings Numbers 17 To 21,24 And 25)

PORTSMOUTH

SU60SW WHALE ISLAND 774-1/3/468 HMS Excellent: Quarterdeck Block 08/07/98 (Buildings Nos.17-21, 24 & 25)

II

Church of St Barbara, church rooms, gym, lecture theatre and warrant officers' wardroom at Naval Gunnery School. 1885, the wardroom added 1893; later alterations. Red brick in English bond with ashlar dressings. Welsh slate roofs. PLAN: roughly I-shaped plan with a central gym, flanking theatre and chapel, and wider end offices and mess. EXTERIOR: (6:3:6 bays) with end cross-wings: wardroom on left of 2 storeys with paired gables; church rooms on right of 1 storey with attic, 2 gabled bays, that on right projecting further and with porch set in angle. Chamfered plinth; offset buttresses between bays; stepped eaves; ashlar coping. Small-pane windows with continuous ashlar sills and lintels, transomed and with dripmoulds to gym and ground floor of cross-wings; paired 2-light windows to hall and church. Caernarvon-arched board doors. Central range: central section (gym) has central square bay window with cornice and blocking course, surmounted by large Royal Coat of Arms. Windows of 3 x 3 lights rising through eaves under gablets. Central clock tower with swept metal base; pedimented wooden architrave to clock face on each side; and ogee metal roof with decorative iron weather-vane. Slightly lower flanking sections have end doors below 3-light windows; roofs half-hipped at outer ends; and central ridge louvres with ogee caps, that over hall with metal finial, that over church with cross- finial. Rear: similar with some C20 additions. Tall ribbed brick stacks with ashlar blocking courses. Porch to church. Projecting from centre of gym, lower square block with large chimney; pyramidal roof; and central pyramidal-roofed and finialed louvre. Left return (wardroom): 2-storey porch; entrance on left; transomed windows with dripmoulds. INTERIOR: church has panelled dado; round-arched sanctuary recess; braced wooden queen post roof trusses; at north end tripartite wooden 1st World War Memorial with taller central section having engraving of battleships at sea surmounted by portrait of Rear Admiral Hood and biblical text. Gym: board-lined roof with similar roof trusses; framed wooden sub-structure to clock tower. HISTORY: the permanent gunnery school on Whale Island was

built by convicts on reclaimed land with spoil from the dockyard extension. Though architecturally conservative, the Quarterdeck Block is a unique example of military planning, including these 5 separate functions in a single imposing range. (The Oxford Illustrated History of The Royal Navy: Oxford: 1995-: 255).

Listing NGR: SU6377602639

This List entry has been amended to add sources for War Memorials Online and the War Memorials Register. These sources were not used in the compilation of this List entry but are added here as a guide for further reading, 27 October 2017.