Number 33 Store (Building Number 1/150)

SU 6200 NE MAIN ROAD (East side) HM Naval Base 774-1/17/220 No 33 Store (Building No.1/150)

GV II

Stores and workshops. 1782 (Property Register), with later alterations. Red brick in English bond with ashlar dressings and gauged bright-red brick flat arches to openings. Hipped slate roofs. PLAN: 2 parallel ranges with linking intermediate courtyard, this later roofed over and built up to form one large block. EXTERIOR: 2 now 3 storeys; 17 x 10 bays. Ashlar plinth, 1st-floor plat band, and string on stepped, dentilled brick band over 1st and 2nd floors; parapet with flat coping. Tall windows with 18-pane sashes and stone sills. Panelled and board doors. North elevation: 3 central bays projecting and 3 right hand bays recessed on ground and 1st floors, the 2nd floor in line across whole elevation indicating that it is of a later build. On ground floor, 7 round archways with ashlar imposts and keystones and containing a 12- pane sash or an entrance (bays 3, 7 and 13, the 2 former now with windows). One bulbous rainwater head and parts of the lead downpipe. West elevation: arranged 4:3:3 bays, the end sections projecting. 2 inserted mid (20 wide entrances, to central and right-hand sections; left-hand section has windows set in pairs and central 4-panel door below small-pane overlight. South elevation: arranged 2:5:3:5:2 bays, ends and centre projecting. Inserted segmental-arched entrances to bays 9 and 13; original flat- arched entrance with board door to bay 5.2 original bulbous rainwater heads, that on left embossed "GR 1787", and parts of lead downpipes. East elevation: 3:3:3 bays, ends projecting. Original cambered-arched entries to bays 3 and 7 and round-arched entrance with imposts and keystone to bay 6; inserted segmental-arched entrance to bay 2. INTERIOR: chamfered square wooden columns support large-scantling chamfered cross-beams. In north range at north-west corner an open-well stair with widely-spaced plain cast-iron balusters, decorative columnar cast-iron newels, and ramped wooden handrail. Similar, but plainer, stair at east end. HISTORY: built as one of 4 similar store/workshops to a courtyard plan as part of the dockyard modernisation programme. The central open area was used for timber storage. This block was the north-western one. The south- western and south-eastern blocks survive as No.24 and No.25 Stores' Jago Road (qqv); the north-eastern block, much damaged 1940s, as Building No. 1/149 (not included). Though altered, part of a planned group of interest as an attempt to rationalise dockyard workshop activities in a formal arrangement of self-contained buildings. (Sources: Coad J: The Royal Dockyards 1690-1850: Aldershot: 1989: 153 ; The Buildings of England: Lloyd D: Hampshire and the Isle of Wight: Harmondsworth: 1985: 414; The Portsmouth Papers: Riley R(: The Evolution of the Docks and Industrial Buildings in Portsmouth: Portsmouth: 1985: 10-11).

Listing NGR: SU6299200361