Details
SU 6300 NW STONY LANE
HM Naval Base
774-1/29/238 Nos 18 & 19 Stores with linking
And attached bollards (Buildings
Nos 1/65 & 75)
GV II*
Alternatively known as: The Double Ropehouse and Hatchelling House, STONY LANE HM NAVAL BASE
Hatchelling house and hemp store 1771, linking bridge late C18 to early C19 (Riley p11), all with later alterations; double ropehouse 1771-75, remodelled as storehouse 1868, major alterations and reconstruction 1954- 61. Red brick with some blue headers in English bond. Plain tile roofs.
EXTERIOR: No.19 Store; 2 storeys. The 10 x 2-bay hatchelling house, to north, and longer 13 x 2-bay hemp store to south were originally free- standing; in the early C20 the narrow yard between them was roofed over to form a single storehouse. 2-light small-pane casement windows with segmental brick arches and projecting sills. South elevation: replacement metal windows, on 1st floor with concrete sills and lintels. 2 wide segmental-arched entrances (bays 2 and 7) with mid C20 folding steel doors. Eaves band. 3 late C20 roof-lights at left end. At right end, and partly blocking ground-floor window, is 2-storey, 3-bay bridge linking store and rope- house. Bridge has plinth with offsets; round central archway flanked by slightly lower segmental archways, each with ashlar imposts and lunette above having radial glazing bars and stone sills (lunettes at centre on west side and at south end on east side are bricked up); stepped eaves. The former ropehouse is a very long range (1,095 feet) of 3 storeys and attic; 109 bays, almost symmetrical (west section longer by 1 bay), the 6 bays at each end breaking forward on each side as end blocks. Stepped plinth. Mid C20 metal windows with concrete sills and original segmental brick arches, replaced by soldier-brick arches on 2nd floor. Large inserted, mid C20 loading entrances with folding steel doors, at each gable end as well as on long sides. Boxed eaves. Mid C20 brick fire walls rising through flat-topped mansard roof with hipped, glazed roof lights. At east end, the corners are canted on ground floor, the upper floors carried on large stone corbels. At centre of range a throughway was cut in the mid C19 (when building became a store). It has carriage arch flanked by pedestrian arches, all round-arched and with linking stone imposts; the central arch has keystone, on north side carved with fouled anchor; on each side at base are two bollards, (imitating upended cannon barrels with cannon balls in muzzles). Flanking throughway are wide round archways with imposts and keystones, bricked-up and now with doors. Another bollard comprising upended cannon barrel of (17 (or (16) date with blocked muzzle at south- west corner of building.
INTERIORS: the ropery was gutted mid (20 and has replacement steel- framed internal structure and roof trusses. The hatchetting house and hemp store is the only store in this part of the dockyard to retain its (18 internal features. Each has chamfered, square timber posts on padstones supporting large-scantling wooden cross-beams (a single row of posts in south range and 3 rows in north range). Roof trusses, of large- scantling timbers, have tie-beams and collared queen posts supporting down-braced king posts; trusses in south range cut through and altered. North range on ground floor has series of small, numbered brass plates (for measuring purposes); at east end is a trap door to 1st floor; and in north-east corner, the original wooden winder stair, having broad shallow treads, plain handrail on wooden posts, board-lined walls, and hinged shutter to ground floor stair window. HISTORY: in the Hatchelling House, hemp was straightened out, or hatchelled, by being pulled across boards studded with iron spikes. It was then carried across the bridge to the ropehouse for laying, .made into hemp strings, and after these had been tarred, spinning into rope. This was the first naval double ropehouse, with the spinning house on the ground floor, the laying house on the 1st and 2nd floors and the lofts used by apprentice ropemakers. The building is the 6th great ropehouse to stand on the site since 1665. The 1760 plan for the dockyard was to move the ropeyard to the N end, but it was burnt down in both 1760 and 1770 before the land there had been reclaimed, and the new ropery had to be re-built on the old site. It was gutted by an arsonist fire in 1776, and rebuilt internally. Though much altered since ropemaking ceased in the mid C19, the ropery is of historic interest as the first naval double ropery, and the model for the much more complete example at (hatham (qv). With the hatchetting house, part of one of the largest integrated groups of (18 industrial buildings in the country.
(Sources: (oad j: Historic Architecture of HM Naval Base Portsmouth 1700- 1850: Portsmouth: 1981: plates 13, 14, 16 ; Coad j: The Royal Dockyards 1690-1850: Aldershot: 1989: 206 ; The Buildings of England: Lloyd D: Hampshire and the Isle of Wight: Harmondsworth: 1985: 410,414; The Portsmouth Papers: Riley R(: The Evolution of the Docks & Industrial Buildings in Portsmouth: Portsmouth: 1985: 11 ; Portsmouth Naval Base Property Trust: Naval Heritage at Portsmouth, Visitor's Guide: Portsmouth: 1988).
Listing NGR: SU6299200361
