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

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Date:: 2002-10-02
Reference:: IOE01/07718/13
Rights:: © Mr John Hussey. Source: Historic England Archive

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Official 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

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.

Understanding list entries

Corrections and minor amendments

This List entry helps identify the building designated at this address for its special architectural or historic interest.

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.

Understanding list entries

Corrections and minor amendments

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.