Clarence Store, Royal William Victualling Yard

The Clarence Store, located within the Royal William Victualling Yard in Plymouth, was built between 1829 and 1831 by Sir John Rennie Jnr. It was constructed for the Victualling Board and features ironwork by the Horsley Company. Following the arrival of the Navy Ordnance Board in 1891, a portion of the building was adapted for use as offices.

The store is built of limestone ashlar and rubble, with granite dressings. It has ashlar stacks and a double-pile roof supported by cast-iron internal columns and an iron frame, tiled and hipped. Designed in the Late Georgian style, the building has a rectangular plan, divided into three sections. The symmetrical front and rear elevations have a 9:7:9-window range. The central section projects forward. A granite plinth rises to a plat band, first-floor band, and cornice, with a parapet raised over the central section featuring rusticated quoins. Windows are segmental-arched on the ground floor, flat-headed on the first floor, and square on the second floor. These windows predominantly contain small-paned metal casements from the 1960s, with some later 19th-century timber sash windows. Loading doors with iron frames and double doors are located in the centre and three bays from each end, with iron swing hoists to the upper floor. The plat band is inscribed with the word "CLARENCE" on the north-east side. The ends of the building are four bays each, with the north end having blocked ground-floor windows.

The interior features a framework of three rows of cast-iron columns supporting timber beams, and a single row of columns on the second floor supporting segmental cast-iron arches. The roof is of a similar design to that found in the Melville Building and the Old Cooperage, incorporating flat wrought-iron ties, king and queen ties, L-section steel struts, I-section principal rafters, and purlins with parabolic bottom flanges, all bolted and wedged together. Two stone cantilevered open-well staircases with iron stick balusters, one with a gate at the top landing, are situated in the inner corners of the outer blocks on the south-west side. A later office suite, constructed in 1891, occupies the south-east end, featuring lightweight partitions and a dogleg staircase with stick balusters and moulded newels.

The Clarence Store operated continuously as stores and has seen fewer alterations than other buildings within the Victualling Yard. It houses the earliest of Rennie's all-metal roofs at the Yard, originally slated, and incorporates fire-resistant features such as iron doors and windows, reflecting the storage of inflammable spirits. These are considered early instances of fire-proof construction, comparable to contemporary textile mills. The Royal William Victualling Yard itself represents a remarkable and complete early 19th-century industrial complex and a unique English example of Neo-Classical planning for a state manufacturing site.