Morice Gate, Two Gatehouses (Mo 39 And 65) And Attached Dockyard Walls

SX 4454 NE PLYMOUTH MORICE YARD, Devonport Dockyard 740-1/95/183 Morice Gate, two gatehouses (MO 39 and 65) and attached dockyard walls

GV II*

Gateway, attached dockyard walls, and pair of houses, now guard houses. 1720-1724, by Andrew Jelf, Clerk of Works, to layout by Colonel C Lilly, for the Board of Ordnance. Wall of Dunstone shaly rubble and granite ashlar; stucco gatehouses with lateral and gable stacks and slate roofs. PLAN: pair of single-depth houses flanking gateway. EXTERIOR: 2-storeys, attic and basement; windowless gatehouse road fronts. Gateway has large granite piers capped with iron mortars, and linked by a scrolled overthrow and octagonal lantern, with C20 timber doors. Facades of houses have plinths, round-arched doorways to inner and outer sides, the left-hand pier is blocked; each has a central lateral stack with a raised panel below the eaves. The inner gables have single first floor and paired attic lights, the S gable has an oculus to the attic, and gable stacks. The 2-window returns have segmental-arched ground-floor and flat-headed first-floor sashes, and granite basement lit by a well to the inner side. INTERIOR: not inspected but noted as having been altered mid C20. SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: the dockyard walls, of carefully bedded rubble with square piers and weathered top, extends approx. 300m to the S and W terminating beside the entrance to the South Yard, and approx. 65m to the N extending down to E of the Powder House (qv). HISTORY: the original entrance and perimeter walls to the Yard, a carefully-planned site with the raised Officer's Terrace and the Stores (qv) on the tower level. The walls, with their distinctive construction typical of the Ordnance Board at this time, form an important element enclosing the most complete C18 Ordnance Yard in the country. (Sources: Coad J: Historic Architecture of the Royal Navy: London: 1983: 138-141; Coad J: The Royal Dockyards 1690-1850: Aldershot: 1989: 249-250).

Listing NGR: SX4496654893