Details
MARCHWOOD
1860/5/35 MAGAZINE LANE
21-MAY-85 Former receiving room at former Royal
Naval Armaments Depot 130m north of En
trance Lodge (Marchwood Yacht Club off
ices)
(Formerly listed as:
MAGAZINE LANE
Former receiving room at former Royal
Naval Armaments Depot 130m north of En
trance Lodge)
GV II
The former Receiving Room is an integral part of A (No.1) Magazine at Marchwood, which was built between 1814 and 1816, using plans drawn up by Lieutenant-General Sir William Congreve, Bt., Colonel Commandant of the Royal Artillery and Controller of the Royal Laboratory at Woolwich. It is a brick construction which originally had a roof of slate.
DESCRIPTION: In plan the Receiving Room is a simple oblong red brick building forming the north side of the rectangular enclosure around Magazine `A' (No.1). There is an opening in the centre of the Receiving Room with cambered arches, which corresponds to the gateway on the south side of the Magazine enclosure wall. This central entrance opened to the former pier to the north and the magazine to the south. Originally it had a pitched roof of slate, but is now battened felt, hipped to the ends. The south elevation has eight windows, each with a small stone ledge beneath, four to either side of the central entrance. The interior fittings of the magazines are no longer present.
HISTORY: The threat of French invasion in 1779, and the advent of the Napoleonic Wars caused a dramatic reform in the way that gunpowder was stored and issued in Britain. Until the later years of the C18 storage facilities for gunpowder required a bombproof structure. Most powder was stored in old fortifications or more recently constructed similar massive vaulted buildings. At this time the two sites of gunpowder production in the country were at Waltham Abbey and Faversham, both of which were established in the C17, and acquired by the Crown in the C18. Under the new system, the powder produced here was stored at eight depots around the country, from where it was issued as needed. These depots were at Purfleet, Tilbury, Gravesend, Upnor Castle, Priddy's Hard, Tipner Point (both within Portsmouth Harbour), Keyham Point (Devonport), and Picket Field in Berkshire. In addition to these, a magazine in Hyde Park supplied London, and other powder was stored in floating magazines in the River Medway, at Portsmouth and at Plymouth. In 1811 it was decided to increase the number of depots, and to replace the floating magazines with more permanent storage facilities. With this in mind, four new magazines were built; at Dorchester, Carmarthen, North Hyde and Marchwood. Of these four magazines, Marchwood was the largest, and remained in service for the longest time.
At this time gunpowder was stored in barrels, each containing 90 lbs of powder. The Marchwood site was intended to store 20,000 barrels. In its initial design the Marchwood Depot was to contain the 20,000 barrels in one enormous magazine. By 1807 the Board of Ordnance had realised the importance of the provision of separate buildings for examining powder and other functions at magazines. After much deliberation about the design of the depot, it was decided to construct three magazines, placed as far apart as possible, each having the capacity for 6,800 barrels. Built into the design was Congreve's revolutionary idea of using `soft top' roofs (which, because of the low resistance in the roof, allowed any accidental blast to go upwards rather than outwards), hollow wall construction to reduce the risk of damp penetration(patented by John Groves in 1809), and a canal to move the barrels by barge from magazine to magazine. Although canal communication was used in the major Ordinance factories, the small canal just to the south of the magazines used for moving barrels by barge is thought to be unique. The powder from Marchwood was used to supply the smaller Portsmouth magazines at Priddy's Hard and Tipner Point and also to supply the fleet off Spithead.
At Marchwood the three magazines, together with the ancillary buildings and the perimeter wall, were built between 1814 and 1816. Magazine A (No.1) is the only one of the three original magazines to survive. The other early magazines, D (No.2) and G (No.3) were destroyed in 1940. The Receiving Room forms the north side of the rectangular enclosure around Magazine A. It was built at the same time as Magazine A, originally as a Shoe Room for changing into specialised magazine clothing.
Four more magazines were added in 1856-7 due to the shortcomings revealed by the Crimean War. This effective second foundation of Marchwood took its storage capacity to three magazines of 14,400 and one of 9,600 barrels. By 1864 it was the largest magazine in the country, according to the Times, with a capacity of 76,000 barrels. The canal was by now superseded by a roller way. The Board of Ordnance was abolished in 1856, and the War Office took over its responsibilities. In 1890 control of Marchwood was handed over to the Navy. The Receiving Room was extended in 1899 for use as a cordite store. Cordite had been introduced in the 1890's, and was considered to have relatively benign qualities. The presence of exposed metal was no longer considered dangerous in a cordite magazine, but temperature control was now needed.
Marchwood Depot began to be wound down soon afterwards, and a number of its magazines were destroyed by bombing in 1940. The Depot was closed in 1961.
SUMMARY OF IMPORTANCE: despite the loss of some of its elements, the features which characterise it; its floor plan, its relationship with the Magazine, and the quality of its brickwork, testify to its concept and usage. It dates from a period which marks a new approach to the concept of gunpowder storage, and of which there are no similar listed examples. It is integral to the construction of Magazine A and also has strong group value with the other structures at the Marchwood Depot.
