Number 16 Store The Powder House (Mo 42)

SX 4454 NE PLYMOUTH MORICE YARD, Devonport Dockyard 740-1/95/189 No.16 Store, the Powder House (MO 42)

GV II*

Powder magazine, now store. 1744. Coursed rubble with brick dressings, vaulted roof not visible. Rectangular single-depth plan. EXTERIOR: single storey; 7 -bay range. Parapeted front with brick corners, 3-bay centre has brick pilasters to a raised parapet and central pediment, small C20 doorway and loops to the flanking bays; C19 inserted casements either side with brick dressings. Returns have blind round arches in projected full-height panels, that to the left has a round- arched doorway. Above the central entrance is a good gilded cartouche of the Duke of Montague. INTERIOR: divided by brick baffle walls with 5 segmental-arched openings, smaller at each end, into 4 bays with round-arched stone vaults, each with a channelled timber beam extending from front to back along the top, part of a former all-wood traveller. The walls are reported to have a double skin, to contain blast and maintain an even temperature. HISTORY: originally designed with a surrounding wall intended, like the internal baffles, to deflect blast. The Yard was laid out by the Board of Ordnance from 1720, and Lord Montague was Master General of the Ordnance from 1739-49. This is the earliest surviving naval ordnance magazine, illustrative of the way Ordnance Yard magazines were sited close to dockyards prior to the establishment of Priddy's Hard, 1773, (qv) near Portsmouth. Of considerable historic importance, within the best surviving naval ordnance yard in the country. (Sources: The Buildings of England: Pevsner N: Devon: London: 1989: 653; Coad J: Historic Architecture of the Royal Navy: London: 1983: 133-5).

Listing NGR: SX4490554958