Former Cooperage at Southdown Quay

This is part of the King's Brewhouse complex, now converted into two cottages. It dates from the early 18th century. The building is constructed of local stone rubble with Plymouth stone ashlar to the quoins and dressings. The left-hand gable is slate-hung, and the roof is of gabled slate, with brick rear lateral stacks. The rectangular plan building is two storeys high, with a four-window front. It features segmental brick arches over mid-20th century first-floor windows, and segmental stone arches over similar ground-floor windows. A segmental arch over a former loading bay is infilled in the mid-19th century with a segmental brick arch over a 20th-century door set in an 18th-century heavy pegged frame.

The interior includes cased beams of heavy scantling to the ground floor.

Historically, this formed part of a large brewhouse complex built in the early 18th century to supply ships of the line. Its use declined after the early 19th-century construction of John Rennie’s victualling yard south of the Royal Naval Dockyards at Plymouth. The building is shown on a 1794 plan as the "North Cooperage Yard" and was likely truncated in the mid-19th century. The stacks were originally used to carry away smoke from small fires used to heat the staves before being bent. Cooperages were typically single-storey structures; the upper storey here was likely used for the storage of timber, staves, and hoops.