Shell Painting Room

1137/0/10114 PRIDDY'S HARD 17-APR-09 Shell Painting Room

GV II Shell painting room. 1900/01. Steel framed, with English bond brick walling to panels, slate roof on steel trusses. Long free-standing-shed in 12 bays, hipped ends. The entrance end has a central pair of wide plank doors, and above these is the continuous glazing between stanchions, here in 3 bays, but temporarily blocked. The long returns have a similar continuous clerestorey band in three 4-pane timber lights to eight bays, but 2 lights each to two bays at each end (corresponding with hipped section) and all set in to the I-stanchions between bays; the rear is as the front. Above the window strip is a deep plank valance with scalloped ends. To the left of the doors at the front are remains of an original cantilevered canopy on cast-iron brackets to a cycle rack.

INTERIOR: timber trusses. The narrow gauge tramway ran the length of the building at its centre.

HISTORICAL NOTE: This building was positioned on the transit system that linked the Shell Filling Rooms, Fuzing Rooms sited outside the ramparts to the remainder of the site. It was built in 1900/01, its style being characteristic of the distinctive architectural mark that the navy imposed on those ordnance yards that came under its administration in 1890. It is the best-preserved of three painters' shops and a structure relating to a key function relating to the production of shells for warships on this site. The variety of naval ordnance available required the colour coding of ammunition and containers, and the varnishing of shell interiors to prevent the formation of salts.

The magazines and related structures at Priddy's Hard date from the late 18th century. The site's expansion from the mid 19th century was closely related to the development of land and sea artillery and the navy's transition from the age of sail, powder and solid shot to the Dreadnought class of the early 1900s. Priddy's Hard retains the best-preserved range of structures that relate to this remarkable history of continual enlargement and adaptation, one that encompasses that of Britain's dominance as a sea power on a global scale. For further historical details on this site, see the description for 'A' Magazine.