Number 11 Store (Building Number 1/59)

Number 11 Store, Main Road, HM Naval Base

A Grade I listed building dating from 1763, designed by the architects Templar, Parlby and Templar. The structure was restored following fire damage in 1874 by Riley. It now serves as a museum, library and offices.

The building is constructed in red brick with glazed blue headers laid in English bond, with ashlar dressings throughout. It features a flat-topped mansard slate roof with a lead top.

The structure comprises three storeys with a cellar and attic level, arranged over thirteen bays by three bays in a rectangular plan. An ashlar plinth runs along the base, with a 1st-floor band and sill band in ashlar. A stepped brick eaves band sits below a plain ashlar cornice, topped by a coped parapet. The ground-floor openings, originally doorways, have round-arched ashlar surrounds with keystones that rise into the 1st-floor band, with plinth blocks and imposts. Windows throughout are 18-pane sashes to the first and second floors (with 12-pane sashes to the second floor), featuring gauged bright-red brick flat arches and ashlar cills, some of which have been replaced in concrete. Flat-roofed attic dormers are present. Rainwater pipes have bulbous heads.

The north-east elevation displays bays arranged in a 5:3:5 pattern, with the centre projecting slightly below a pediment that carries a later clock. A central panelled double door in an eared architrave with a tripartite keystone is flanked by windows. Other ground-floor bays contain doorways, now largely converted to windows, with round-arched ashlar surrounds.

The rear elevation mirrors the north-east design. A 2nd-floor loading door with crane is positioned centrally, and an oculus is set within the pediment. The returns on each side have a central entrance with a loading door above, fitted with double doors and fanlights with radial glazing bars. Cantilevered landings serve the loading doors; the left return's landing has been replaced by a late 20th-century bridge providing a link to No. 10 Store. The right return retains its crane-housing.

The building is surrounded by a raised pavement of granite slabs carried on iron arches at the front and a brick plinth at the rear. Iron grilles protect cellar windows; trap doors formerly existed on the rear side.

The cellar contains transverse brick walls between the bays carrying round-arched brick vaults, with a passage running along the rear. The floors above are supported by square wooden columns carrying large-scantling cross-beams and joists, with wide wooden floorboards throughout. The ground floor has been reconstructed as a museum gallery but retains some original floorboards, including reused ships' timbers. Several first and second-floor rooms are board-lined, with eaves boards featuring flower-like vents.

The original central wooden staircase rises from the ground floor to the attic. It has an open well, closed string, shallow treads, turned balusters, square newels with moulded caps and a broad moulded handrail. This staircase is notably more decorative than those in the slightly later No. 9 and No. 10 Stores.

The roof is board-lined with braced queen-post trusses of large-scantling timbers.

This building is one of three large stores (Nos. 9 and 10) forming a particularly significant group. Much of the Georgian naval yard was occupied by stores, and these three represent the most architecturally distinguished surviving examples in any of the naval yards.