Number 24 Store (Building Number 1/117)

This is a two-range store and workshop building, dating from 1783, with later alterations including a 20th-century addition to the second floor. Constructed of red brick in Flemish bond with ashlar dressings, it has hipped slate roofs. The original plan comprised two free-standing parallel ranges running east to west, linked by a courtyard which was later roofed over to create a single building.

The exterior is three storeys high and has 17 bays by 9. It features an ashlar plinth, a band at first-floor level, and flat coping to the parapet. The windows are tall 18-pane sashes in reveals with gauged flat brick arches and stone sills; shorter, fixed 12-pane metal windows are present on the second floor. The building has wide, panelled double doors with louvred vents set within wooden architraves incorporating console-bracketed cornices. Loading doors are located on the first floor, set within quoined, raised, ashlar surrounds with cornices. Rainwater pipes have bulbous heads. The south elevation’s bays are arranged 2:5:3:5:2, with projecting ends and a central section originally under pediments. Doorways are located in bays 5, 9, and 13, the third having been replaced by a window. The central loading door has also been converted to a window. The rear elevation is similar, although some features have been altered; the right-hand doorway lacks its cornice and has an inserted loading door above, and the central first-floor loading door is now a window. A fire escape was added across the centre. The west elevation has a recessed central section with a round-arched doorway, a pedestrian entrance to the right with a wooden cornice, and inserted loading doors. The east elevation, partially obscured by a link to an adjacent building, has two entrances similar to those on the west side.

The interior ground floor features square, chamfered wooden posts set on wooden pads, which support large-scantling beams with stop-chamfered spine beams with run-out stops. Originally one of four similar stores and workshops arranged around a courtyard, the building was part of a planned group of 18th-century stores constructed as part of a dockyard modernization programme. The courtyard served as a storage area. It was the south-western building of a planned grouping; the south-eastern and north-western blocks survive, and the north-eastern block was significantly damaged in the 1940s. The buildings are notable for their attempt to formalize dockyard workshop activities within self-contained structures.