SOUTH SAW MILLS (S 128, 148, 149, 150)

SX 4454 SE PLYMOUTH SOUTH YARD, Devonport Dockyard

740-1/97/225 South Saw Mills (5 128,148, 149,150)

GV II*

Saw mills, disused. c1856-59, probably designed by Col G T Greene, RE, Director of the Admiralty Works Department; sawing machinery by James Horn, steam engine by Easton and Amos. Limestone ashlar with corrugated sheet roof, fire proof iron internal frame. PLAN: rectangular open plan with 7x5-bay saw mill and N former engine and boiler house and chimney (demolished) attached to its Wend. 2 storeys, attic and basement; 8:2-window E and W range, 1 :6-window N range and 2:3:2-window S range. EXTERIOR: E and W elevations have wide clasping pilasters to a cornice and coped parapet, plat band, the 2-window N ends set forward, the second bay from the N has a double door with a radial fanlight, the first bay has a blocked ground-floor window; the main saw mill range to the S has an iron-framed ground-floor of large I-section cast-iron stanchions and sliding metal doors beneath continuous upper glazing with three 12-pane lights to each bay. A sloping apron of granite setts extends down from the doors. N engine and boiler house elevation has a 1-window E section set forward, with fenestration as the E elevation. S elevation has openings within matching arched recesses, round on the ground floor and segmental on the first, to ground-floor 6/6-pane sashes and tilting first-floor casements. 3 gables, taller in the middle, separated by buttresses. INTERIOR: a massive, fire-proof, internal cast-iron frame with hollow round columns to a jack-arch floor springing from cast-iron beams with parabolic bottom flanges; iron roof trusses with hollow section iron valley beams. Open-well stone stair in NE corner. HISTORY: closely related to Greene's contemporary saw mill and smithery at Sheerness (qv). Timber was fed in from the E, through 4 reciprocating frame saws and 3 circular saws arranged along the N-S axis of the mill. In the engine house was a pair of 50hp Easton and Amos rotative beam engines with spur gearing to the drive shaft, and probably providing a forced draft to the adjoining South Smithery (qv). The iron frame is a comparatively old-fashioned system, the heavy work of the mill, built to withstand severe vibration, directing this robust design. Considerable interest as an almost complete fireproof multi-storey saw mill by one of the most important RE officers involved in iron-framed buildings in the dockyards, with its sister building the South Smithery (qv). (Source: PSA Drawings Collection: Unsigned Drawings: 1855: PLM 93-96; Sheerness Dockyard: 1994).

Listing NGR: SX4498654180