Royal Marine Barracks Building 210

Details

PLYMOUTH

SX4653 DURNFORD STREET, Stonehouse 740-1/66/903 (East side) 01/08/97 Royal Marine Barracks: Building 210

GV II

Drill Battery. 1881-91, with extension to north (over basement) added between 1891 and 1911 and mid C20 extension to south. Stone basement with timber-framed superstructure clad in corrugated iron; gabled corrugated iron roof over timber planking. Rectangular plan with the pointed W end resembling the bow-end of a ship; gun-training deck set over basement, originally (before extension of 1891-1911) opening onto terrace to north. EXTERIOR: 2 storeys in height, the lower of which is a basement which in effect forms the ground floor towards its west end. Access to the building is via a broad flight of steps at the NW end of the former terrace, and by a pair of double sliding doors at the E end; a further door gives access to the basement at the W end. The building was lit by windows in the south wall (now partly obscured by mid C20 addition) and also by a series of north-facing skylights. INTERIOR: the upper floor has been subdivided in C20, but was originally open throughout. Floor consist of butt-edged caulked planking. There is a load-bearing beam, secured by tusk-tenons, along the north side; tackle may also have been looped around the roof trusses, which are of king-post form with iron strapping, bolting and tension rods. Beadings and mouldings to former side-wall openings, with some pulley rings and cleats for mantlets attached to iron stanchions along north side of wall: it is probable that these stanchions were inserted when the extension was built over the terrace to the north. The interior walls are lined in vertical and horizontal planking. There is an iron shell-hoit shute visible at the west end of the basement, which is divided into three unequal sections. It is mostly characterised by a series of parallel stone walls at approx 5-foot centres which, with joisting and plates of heavy scantling, were designed to support the gundeck above. 3 brick barrel-vaulted storage chambers underlie the terrace. HISTORY: three other drill batteries existed at Plynouth including the Long Room Drill Battery of 1858, which stood to the NE. Plans in the Public Record Office show a similar plan form to Building 210, with port holes (for rifled muzzle loaders) in the side walls and pivoted gun mountings to the front. The principal difference is the lack of clerestorey

lighting, which was needed in Building 210 for the Royal Navy's new rifled breech loaders - and especially operation of their increasingly sophisticated hydraulic pedestal mountings. The floor has circular cuts which may have housed shutes similar to that surviving at the west end. This building is an historically important and unique surviving example - in a national context - of a drill battery. Gunnery training had been increasing in importance from the 1830s, and this building also relates to the transition signalled in this period by the building of the first steel-hulled and steam-driven "dreadnoughts". (Public Records Office: ADM/PLM/316; Report by Exeter Archaeology: June 1996).



Listing NGR: SX4660753734

Legacy

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Legacy System number:

473361

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LBS

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