Number 16 Store (Building Number 1/63) And Bollard At South West Corner

Number 16 Store, also known as West Hemp House, is located at HM Naval Base on Anchor Lane. This building, dated "GR 1111771," has undergone significant alterations in the mid to late 20th century. It is constructed of red brick with some blue headers in English bond and features a flat-topped mansard roof of plain tiles with a rooflight, replacing the former double-pitched roof.

The store stands three storeys tall with a cellar and has 18 bays. The south side has an ashlar plinth, and there are buttresses at the ground floor, each with a brick table and stepped offset head. A cannon-barrel bollard is set against the northwesternmost buttress. The windows have segmental brick arches, with replacement soldier-brick arches on the second floor, concrete sills, and 20th-century metal windows. There are large, inserted 20th-century loading doors with folding metal doors, as well as two pedestrian doors on the north side. The east gable features blue headers that highlight royal initials, the date, a flag, and a crown.

Inside, the building has replacement riveted steel roof trusses and a mid to late 20th-century steel-framed internal structure. A notable feature at the southwest corner is a bollard made from an upended cannon barrel, likely from the early to mid-19th century, which was reused as a bollard in the mid to late 19th century, with its muzzle blocked.

Originally named West Hemp House, this building was constructed as part of the rebuilding of the ropery following a fire in 1770. It shares a similar design with the adjacent Nos 15 and 17 Stores. Despite its alterations, it remains part of one of the largest integrated groups of 18th-century industrial buildings in the country and is associated with other late 18th-century ropery buildings.