Laboratory North Range And Laboratory Building To Ne Of Laboratory Complex

Laboratory North Range and Laboratory Building to NE of Laboratory Complex

This range of four laboratory units with connecting walls stands at Priddy's Hard. Built in 1847–48 to the designs of Colonel Lewis, the Commanding Royal Engineer of Portsmouth, it was later remodelled and enlarged at various dates. The buildings are constructed in brick laid in Flemish bond with slate roofing and some flat roofs.

The range comprises a series of linked structures running parallel to the Main Offices. From the south-west end, a small one-storey section has two 2-flight 6-pane casements in the gable wall and another on the right return, with a blocked doorway. All these windows have cambered brick heads, and a later window appears on the left return. Attached to this is a two-storey building in five bays with a mixture of sashes and casement lights, some with glazing bars on the ground floor, and two sashes in the gable, all with cambered brick voussoir heads. A flat-roofed link of two bays connects to a high single-storey building with two 12-pane sashes and a door on the far left. Another flat-roofed link joins a similar high unit with a 12-pane sash and a part-glazed door below a 6-pane light to the south-east, while the north-west side has plain wall with one small light. A former entrance with brick piers marks the division before a single-storey unit to the north-east, originally built as a Tinman's Shop, with two replacement casements to the south-east and a small door on the gable end. Interiors retain some matchboarding.

This range was built as a virtually exact reproduction of laboratories designed in 1804 by Sir William Congreve at Portsmouth. The site was selected for the Laboratory in June 1846. Originally, the laboratory complex comprised discrete small buildings arranged around a courtyard, with a larger central unit and free-standing sheds, designed with flat roofs. The recorded uses of rooms in 1848 included a foreman's room, watch house, coal store, and tinman's shop. In 1905, £185 was spent converting the range mainly into workshops.

The Laboratory at Priddy's Hard marked a critical change in the site's role from a storage depot to a sophisticated factory complex. The Laboratories had principally produced small arms ammunition during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, but from 1845, as shells were introduced into naval service on an unprecedented scale, the Laboratories increasingly dealt with filled shells and their fuzes, as well as projectiles and propellants for sea and land-service artillery. The filling and emptying of shells required dedicated facilities separate from magazines, necessitating the development of the Laboratory as a specialized processing complex.

This range represents the most substantial surviving element of what was once a significant ensemble. It is the sole surviving example of an Ordnance Yard Laboratory in Britain. Similar laboratory complexes existed at Woolwich, Devonport, and Upnor Castle, though little now remains of these. The survival of Priddy's Hard is of great importance given the site's unique national significance in the development of British ordnance manufacturing and its relationship to Britain's naval dominance from the late 18th century through the early 20th century.