Police Buildings, Royal William Victualling Yard

SX 4653 NW 740-1/65/749

PLYMOUTH CREMYLL STREET, Stonehouse Police Buildings, Royal William Victualling Yard

GV I

Police buildings including porter's room and warden's house now divided into two. 1830-31, by Sir John Rennie Jnr, for the Victualling Board, altered by 1891, mansard roof added 1899. Limestone ashlar with granite dressings and slate hipped mansard roof. Late Georgian style. PLAN: porter's room at SW end, attached to double-depth house now two single-depth back-to-back houses. EXTERIOR: 2 storey and attic; 8:3-bay front range, 5-bay SW return and 3:5-window rear elevation. NW front forms part of formal entrance with matching front to Slaughterhouse opposite (qv), all of granite with an 8-bay Doric colonnade with entablature and parapet, the rear wall set back with 3 doorways, including a left-hand doorway to the rear garden with a plain surround to a double door with 6 flush panels and a rectangular overlight with diagonal and margin bars. The upper floor is set back with a lead dad dormer. At the SW end the porters room gable has rusticated pilasters to a cornice, set forward to the middle pilasters, with scrolled brackets over them and at the ends, a central sunken panel with a cornice above, and plinth and lateral stack. 3 round-arched openings with rusticated jambs, the middle one in a rusticated arch, contain small-paned 'windows divided by a transom. The SW return has an arcade of round arches with windows as the front, which carries round the 3-window rear; the end bay is blind; behind the parapet the 1899 roof has lead-dad dormers, with double 4/4-pane sashes. The rear elevation to the house has flat-headed windows with plain surrounds, 6/6-pane ground-floor and 8/8-pane first-floor sashes, and a single dormer. From the central doorway leads a timber-framed covered way to a late C19 wash house and kitchen to the S. INTERIOR: most original detail removed; the dogleg winder stairs have curtail and stick balusters. HISTORY: the police presence at the Yard was important in reducing pilferage and the loss of stores. The house was divided to provide for the Inspector of Police (front) and the Yard Engineer (rear). Forms part of a formal entrance to the Yard with the Main Gate and the matching elevation of the Slaughterhouse opposite (qv). The Yard is one of the most remarkable and complete early C19 industrial complexes in the country, and a unique English example of Neo-Classical planning of a state manufacturing site. (Sources: Keystone Historic Buildings Consultants: The Royal William Victualling Yard, Stonehouse: 1994: 46; The Mariner's Mirror: Coad J: Historic Architecture of HM Naval Base Devonport 1689-1850: London: 1983: 382-390; Coad J: The Royal Dockyards 1690-1850: Aldershot: 1989: 282-290).

Listing NGR: SX4625653615