Building 60 (Pattern And Class Room), Rnad Bull Point

740-1/0/10054 RNAD BULL POINT 17-APR-09 Building 60 (Pattern and Class Room), RNAD Bull Point

GV II Pattern and class rooms, later school and doubling as a church in the 1890s, from c1900 cook house and galley, now offices. 1862/3. Squared limestone rubble with brick dressings, quoin strips and eaves band, and slate hipped roof.

PLAN: double-depth plan, with lower N entrance section.

EXTERIOR: 2 storeys; 1:4-window-range. 2-centre arched ground-floor and flat-arched first-floor openings. Lower N section has a doorway with a recessed, panelled door, windows to front and 4-window range rear elevations have 4/4-pane horned sashes, with a single 3/3-pane sash in the N elevation. S end obscured by C20 extension, which is not included.

INTERIOR: some C19 joinery.

HISTORY: This is a unique example of an instructional building in the ordnance depots, in its later manifestation broadly comparable to the classrooms built on barracks from the 1850s and by some enlightened industrialists on factory sites. It is sited uphill to the E of the main avenue, but to a consistently high standard. The first-floor Model Room had specially-designed tables, on which were placed specially-designed sectional models of fuzes, shells etc, such as have been preserved at the Royal Engineer's Museum at Chatham, Kent. In 1866 a laboratory occupied the N end, with the main part divided between and S Girls' School and a N Boys' School.

Bull Point, located just to the north of the Royal Navy's new Steam Yard at Keyham, was the last great project of the Board of Ordnance, which was abolished in 1856. It provided storage for 40,000 barrels of powder in an integrated complex including a floating magazine where powder was unloaded and the 1805 St Budeaux laboratory where it was checked and processed, before being taken to the Bull Point magazines (SAM). In contrast to other yards, Bull Point was from the outset provided with a set of buildings planned and dedicated to the various functions for the processing as well as the storage of the new types of ordnance which had a revolutionary impact on the design of naval ships and fortifications. All the buildings - mostly in ashlar with rock-faced dressings and fronting an avenue to the S of the magazines - are stylistically coherent with the magazines themselves. They comprise both the finest ensemble in any of the Ordnance Yards, consistent with the high standards practised by the Ordnance Board in its designs for fortifications and barracks from the C17 and a remarkable example of integrated factory planning of the period.

For a full history of the site, see Building 13 (qv).