Heavy Lifting Store (So 33)

The Heavy Lifting Store, built around 1840, is a workshop that now serves as a store. It features coursed Dunstone rubble with granite on the ground floor and granite and limestone dressings on the first floor, topped with a gabled corrugated iron roof. The building has a rectangular plan and is two stories high, with a two-window front and six-window sides. The double-gabled front has a slightly battered ground floor, with first-floor keyed flat arches above wide panelled and plank hoist doors, and tall keyed segmental brick arched doorways with 20th-century double doors. A rounded granite corbel is located below the right-hand upper opening. The five-window returns have segmental brick arches over horned 8/8-pane sashes on the left and horned 3/3-pane sashes on the right, with segmental-arched blocked lunettes above the plat bands. There is also a brick segmental arch over plank double doors at the rear of the left return. Inside, the store is noted for its heavy timber posts and beams, as well as its timber roof. The building first appeared on a map of the yard in 1849, marked as a house carpenter's shop, and the first floor may have been added later. It is a complete example of a small dockyard building with interesting structural details that relate to its original function.