Details
1137/0/130 PRIDDY'S HARD
19-JAN-90 'B' Magazine (North and South Stores)
and attached Passage and Boundary Wall
, and Main Rolling Way and attached Fo
reman's Office, Shifting Room and Shoe
Houses, Museum Buildings
(Formerly listed as:
PRIDDY'S HARD
Museum Building)
GV I
A group of structures related to the operation of 'A' Magazine (qv), including a covered link (Rolling Way) for transporting powder barrels to the quay (The Camber, qv). 1770-76, with later alterations and various additions. Brick with slate roofs.
PLAN: first phase comprises a wall to SW of the magazine enclosure and a long range (known as 'B' Magazine, or the North and South Stores) along NE side of 'A' Magazine enclosure and set parallel to 'A' Magazine. This was built as two detached rooms (originally a cooperage and a Shifting Room - initially known as Shoe Rooms - for the examination of powder), within the magazine enclosure and separated by the uncovered Rolling Way from the Camber. The whole was refronted c1847. It is joined to 'A' Magazine by a central link building, which extends towards the Camber (qv) as the Rolling Way, which in the mid and late C19 had the flanking flanking Shoe Rooms, Shifting Room and offices rebuilt in brick.
EXTERIORS: 'B' Magazine. Originally two separate structures, one a two-storey Shifting House (for the inspection of incoming powder) and the other a Cooperage (soon to become another Shifting House). 1773, by 1812 joined by a short passage and in 1827 joined by a central two-storey unit to form a continuous range parallel with the Magazine; between 1849 and 1856 the front was brought into a uniform line; the central roof line was raised by 1859. The E side of the range incorporates the original traverse wall to the Magazine, and the complex history of the group reflected in the variations in treatment and walling. Brick in English bond, including many blue headers in the earlier work, slate roof on timber trusses. The two-storey end sections are fenestrated on the magazine side (W) with sashes set to reveals, cambered brick arches and stone sills, 9 or 12-pane sashes to first floor and 15-pane sashes to ground floor; mid height 3-course plat band, except to the inserted middle range, and with moulded brick former eaves course, now below a further 1m of brickwork to the raised eaves. Gabled ends and back are plain, but with the mid plat-band carried round, and the mixed brickwork especially on the E wall shows various stages of the building's development. At any one stage, before the eventual raising, there was a broad central pediment to the E.
Main Rolling Way, of 1804, similarly rebuilt in brick with slate roof on timber king-post trusses in 1825-7. It opens to 'B' Magazine through a broad arch, and has a sloping floor with broad boards in the direction of run; a further section was inserted, probably also in 1847, between 'A' Magazine.
Foreman's office and Shoe Room (for changing into specialist magazine clothing) 1804, probably then in timber framing, rebuilt 1847 in English bond brick with slate roof on timber trusses. Lies adjacent to the Rolling Way to its S, and 'B' Magazine to its W.
Also S of Rolling Way is single-storey Shifting Room, built after 1883, of brick with slate roof.
Small Shoe Room N of the Rolling Way, with similar history; it is entered from the Rolling Way through a wide plank doorway in two unequal leaves.
INTERIOR: has plank floors, and at the ground floor to the central section is a series of square posts to bracketed caps, carrying transverse beams and longitudinal exposed floor joists; a C19 closed-string quarter-landing stair has square newels, handrail and balusters. Walls are painted brick. At the intersection with the Rolling Way two wide segmental openings provide connection. The king-post roof trusses carry one purlin and close boarding, all limewashed or painted.
HISTORICAL NOTE: An integral part of the original magazine complex at Priddy's Hard.
The magazines and related structures at Priddy's Hard date from the late 18th century. The site's expansion from the mid 19th century was closely related to the development of land and sea artillery and the navy's transition from the age of sail, powder and solid shot to the Dreadnought class of the early 1900s. Priddy's Hard retains the best-preserved range of structures that relate to this remarkable history of continual enlargement and adaptation, one that encompasses that of Britain's dominance as a sea power on a global scale.
For further historical details on this site, see the description for 'A' Magazine.
