North Meadow Workshops Including Wall To W And Fire Engine House To E

Artificers' workshops with guardhouse, built 1802–1803, with Fire Engine House added 1811. Designed by G L Taylor under the direction of General Bentham, Inspector General of Naval Works (drawing no. WO 55/233). Constructed in brick with Flemish bond, with plain tile hipped roofs on timber roof trusses; one roof has been replaced with corrugated iron.

The buildings form long ranges of low single-storey structures arranged on three sides of an open yard, with a reservoir on the western side and open to the east. They were built as workshops for the Royal Military Artificers. The short return at the south end housed a sawpit and has been re-roofed. The main long eastern range, divided at its centre by a former entrance, contained various artificers' shops including wheelwrights, coopers, bricklayers, carpenters, and a smithy at the north end. The two blocks are now linked by the reservoir retaining wall, though brick gate piers mark the position of the former gateway.

The south-facing range towards the yard features a wide pair of plank doors on the left, with three smaller doors at centre and right, and nine small-pane casement windows in two or three lights. Two small ridge stacks are positioned near the centre and at the right-hand end. The returned unit with the sawpit has two 3-light casements on its north front with a later lean-to addition; the outer hipped end has a wide pair of full-height plank doors. The eastern range contains a door and flanking window at its short returned end near the gateway, followed by eight varied casements (including an original 4-light to the former smithy), five varied doors with some wide plank pairs, and two large roof-lights near the centre. This range returns at right angles to the southern-facing range, which originally housed carpenters, a clerk of stores, and a guardhouse (the last with a separate hipped roof, now joined by a twentieth-century flat-roofed unit built where an entrance gateway once stood). This range has a wide pair of plank doors flanked by a 4-light casement on the left and a 3-light casement with transom on the right. Beyond this are a small door with overlight and five casements with transoms, variously two, three and four lights. The former clerk's office has two smaller lights set well down from the eaves. The former guardhouse has a central plank door with varied small lights either side, all with concrete lintels being replacements. An external extractor fan with large metal stack sits on this unit and the adjoining link. The returned hipped end has a plank door to a segmental head.

The Fire Engine House is a small free-standing rectangular building with plain sides and back but a fully open front featuring three pairs of wide full-height plank doors to intermediate posts. A Portland stone flag floor with granite threshold survives.

The interiors were largely out of use at the time of survey in October 2000. The walls are lime-washed brickwork, typically with black bitumen on the lower half. Most rooms retain lime-washed or bitumen-painted queen-post roof trusses, though some have later suspended ceilings. The timber roof trusses have rafters and close boarding. The clerk's office and guardhouse are reputed to retain arcades facing into the former entrance way.

A subsidiary feature consists of a former boundary wall to Weevil Estate, later forming the boundary to the north end of officers' house gardens. Sections date to 1704 and 1764. The wall is constructed in red brick with some blue headers in English bond, running approximately 85 metres east to west immediately south of the North Meadow workshops. The western section runs straight, followed by a short canted section immediately south of the sawpit building, then a further straight run (the latter being the 1764 work). The wall rises approximately 2.75 metres above the paved yard level in one-and-a-half brick thickness, increased to two brick thicknesses for a series of very broad buttresses on the south side. A brick-on-edge coping crowns the wall, with two courses of single brick thickness and a projecting string course capped by a canted tile course.

These extensive buildings, designed in the late eighteenth century and constructed in the early nineteenth century, are believed to represent a unique survival of workshops for the Royal Military Artificers, established in 1784 and renamed Royal Sappers and Miners in 1813. They likely provided technical and skilled labour support to the Weevil Brewery and the Gosport Lines, which were being remodelled in the early nineteenth century. The Artificers were carpenters and builders engaged in the construction of military buildings and fortresses. The western entrance was later blocked when the reservoir was constructed. The workshops remained in their original use until the site was transferred to the Admiralty in 1829 as part of the newly-created Royal Clarence Yard. The barracks that formerly closed the east side of the courtyard have disappeared, but the remaining buildings form part of a significant group with the Bakery and Mill and the Hydraulic Engine House to the east.

The area's initial development in the early eighteenth century included a Brewery and Weevil House, both now demolished, with the area subsequently occupied by Flagstaff Green. The wall is the oldest remaining above-ground structure on the Royal Clarence Yard site. The later section of the wall may contain material salvaged from the demolition of Weevil House and the old brewery. A specification for the 1764 section is recorded in Evans (ADM 110/22).