Royal Arsenal Armstrong Gun Factory
ROYAL ARSENAL ARMSTRONG GUN FACTORY, PLUMSTEAD ROAD SE18
Listed on the National Heritage List for England. Search over 400,000 listed places
Overview
- Heritage Category:
- Listed Building
- Grade:
- II
- List Entry Number:
- 1213553
- Date first listed:
- 26-Jul-1990
- List Entry Name:
- Royal Arsenal Armstrong Gun Factory
- Statutory Address:
- ROYAL ARSENAL ARMSTRONG GUN FACTORY, PLUMSTEAD ROAD SE18
Location
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Images of England Project
- Date:
- 2002-10-02
- Reference:
- IOE01/07718/13
- Rights:
- © Mr John Hussey. Source: Historic England Archive
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Discover moreOfficial list entry
- Heritage Category:
- Listed Building
- Grade:
- II
- List Entry Number:
- 1213553
- Date first listed:
- 26-Jul-1990
- Date of most recent amendment:
- 09-Jul-1997
- List Entry Name:
- Royal Arsenal Armstrong Gun Factory
- Statutory Address 1:
- ROYAL ARSENAL ARMSTRONG GUN FACTORY, PLUMSTEAD ROAD SE18
The scope of legal protection for listed buildings
This List entry helps identify the building designated at this address for its special architectural or historic interest.
Unless the List entry states otherwise, it includes both the structure itself and any object or structure fixed to it (whether inside or outside) as well as any object or structure within the curtilage of the building.
For these purposes, to be included within the curtilage of the building, the object or structure must have formed part of the land since before 1st July 1948.
The scope of legal protection for listed buildings
This List entry helps identify the building designated at this address for its special architectural or historic interest.
Unless the List entry states otherwise, it includes both the structure itself and any object or structure fixed to it (whether inside or outside) as well as any object or structure within the curtilage of the building.
For these purposes, to be included within the curtilage of the building, the object or structure must have formed part of the land since before 1st July 1948.
Location
- Statutory Address:
- ROYAL ARSENAL ARMSTRONG GUN FACTORY, PLUMSTEAD ROAD SE18
The building or site itself may lie within the boundary of more than one authority.
- County:
- Greater London Authority
- District:
- Greenwich (London Borough)
- Parish:
- Non Civil Parish
- National Grid Reference:
- TQ 44212 79288
Details
TQ 4476 PLUMSTEAD ROAD SE18
(North side)
786/9/368 Royal Arsenal
Armstrong Gun Factory
26/07/90
GV II
Gun foundry and turning shop, disused. 1856, by David Murray, engineer, and built in association with Sir William Armstrong, between 1855 and 1863; altered 1911. Polychromatic English garden wall bond brick, yellow stocks with black and orange dressings, cast-iron internal frame, hipped roof with ridge vents.
PLAN: H-plan with central porch, rear courtyard enclosed by an arcade rebuilt 1911.
EXTERIOR: Italianate style. Single storey; 4:6:3:6:4-bay range. Central porch and projecting end wings, with red brick plinth, modillion impost bands and cornice of dentilled triangles, with a parapet. Porch has wide outer buttresses, a round-arched doorway with alternate red and yellow voussoirs, blocked fanlight and mid C20 steel doors, with gauged brick keyed round-arched windows below the impost band, timber frames with roundels at the glazing bar crossings, 2 windows to the sides, and a sunken panel above each; flanking ranges have tall round-arched windows with metal-framed windows, and cast-iron plates with dentils set within the brick impost band; the parapet was added 1911. The returns are symmetrical 9-bay ranges with central bays set forward as the entrance. INTERIOR: axial row of heavy rectangular-section panelled cast-iron columns in the end ranges, formerly for the gantry cranes, with upper round columns connected by segmental-arched cast-iron ties carrying rolled iron roof trusses with king and queen ties. Similar columns formerly extended along the main range.
HISTORICAL NOTE: Armstrong developed the method of manufacturing rifled guns with stronger barrels, which were adopted by both the army and navy and produced under licence at Woolwich. This building was the gun turnery, with gantry cranes along aisles either side of the columns; the adjoining forge has been demolished. An impressive example of Ordnance architecture, in the Baroque tradition established by the Ordnance Board in the early C18, and an important building in the history of British ordnance.
(Hogg O F G, The Royal Arsenal, Oxford, 1963, p.1416; RCHME report 1994)
Listing NGR: TQ4421279288
Legacy
The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.
- Legacy System number:
- 398179
- Legacy System:
- LBS
Sources
Books and journals
Hogg, O F G, The Royal Arsenal, (1963), 1416
Historic Buildings Report in The Royal Arsenal Woolwich, (1994)
Legal
This building is listed under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 as amended for its special architectural or historic interest.
Map
This map is for quick reference purposes only and may not be to scale. This copy shows the entry on 06-Jun-2026 at 21:26:57.
Download a full scale map (PDF)End of official list entry
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