Building 49

740-1/0/10047 Building 49 17-APR-09

II

Foreman's office, printers and store. 1856/7. Limestone ashlar with rock-faced quoins and plinth and doorway dressings, and corrugated sheet roof.

PLAN: U-shaped single-depth plan. The heated foreman's office occupied the E wing, the printers that to the N and the rear range was a flannel cartridge store.

EXTERIOR: single storey; 1-window end gables to projecting wings. NE front has a central entrance with a chamfered segmental arch and double boarded doors, and 2 wings projecting forward each side enclosing a small courtyard with 2 flat-headed doorways on the left; the gable ends have a horned 6/6-pane sash to the left and a segmental-arched doorway to the right, both with small openings in the top of the gable. Sides have rear gables with pairs of small upper windows, and 2 horned sashes to the front part of the wings, that to the E with a decapitated exterior stack. Rear windowless, with a central lean-to with half-glazed doorway facing E.

INTERIOR: original matchboard lining to flannel cartridge store.

HISTORY: This comprises one of the key functional buildings at Bull Point, one of a group built around a road extending from the magazine enclosure.

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).