Details
SU 6100 WEEVIL LANE
1137/5/10085 Royal Clarence Victualling Yard
01-MAR-01 (East side)
Tank Store and attached Steam Fire Eng
ine House
GV II
Store for care and maintenance of ships' water storage tanks, with later engine house. 1833 and 1892. Designer G.L.Taylor, drawing 95/06214 for Store. Cast iron columns with timber trusses and beams, slate roof covering; enclosing walls in braced timber studs plus horizontal boarding; engine house, drawing 95/06284, in stud framing with corrugated steel cladding and roofing on iron trusses.
The original building a long 23-bay open shed with central valley gutter on cast-iron posts as for outer walls; originally open at the sides, timber framed and clad walls were added very soon after completion. This building with double hipped roof to central valley gutter. After 1870 a continuous lean-to was added on the west side of the shed, mainly open-fronted, but with enclosed bays at each end. The engine house is set centrally at the N end of the store, and is gabled at each end.
The S end of the unit is black painted boarding, with a scatter of 5 small 4-pane casements, a pair of doors into the lean-to, and three further plank doors in the main shed. The long return to the E is also painted black, with four small lights near the left end, a near central door and two further small doors towards the right. The return to the W has, at each end, an enclosed unit with white-painted boarding to 3 or 4 bays; that to the left has three paired 4-pane lights and a small plank door, and to the right, four 8-pane lights, one small section is in red brick with an 8-pane light to segmental head. Between these is a series of open bays on timber posts, some bays towards the left brought forward with the roof swept down. At the N end the engine house has palin corrugated walls below a continuous run of paired fixed lights which return as 1+3+1 paired lights alternating with single vertical panels, these above two pairs of full height and width plank doors with original iron hinges; in the gable is square louvred opening, the gable with barge-board. To the left is a wide pair of doors to the store, and to the right a 6-pane light.
Interior: exactly as built, with slender cast iron posts to flared capitals supporting a continuous valley beam at the centre, and a ring-beam to the exterior, carrying king-post trusses, with a continuous spacer-beam between trusses at tie level, all these in lime washed timber. The outer enclosure is formed with slender studs at c 600mm centres, with a single cross-brace to each bay. The low-pitched roof is formed with rafters longitudinally at c 600mm centres, plus close boarding; the inward facing slopes have a series of roof lights which were put in when the outer walls were added. There is no sub division within the store; there are some remnants of metal framing which were part of a re-use in 1934 as a Boom Defence Depot. Flooring is in stone slabs. The interior of the engine house was not inspected
A cleanly designed and articulated early industrial building which has been scarcely changed since its erection. The responsibility for watering naval ships was transferred from Dockyard to the Victualling Department in 1832, and the store had to provide for 3,000 cast-iron tanks, cleaned and kept in condition to be transferred to vessels as needed. This is the only purpose built tank storage unit known to survive, and, in the context of the grand Bakery and Mill (qv) lying to its N, forms a very significant element in the victualling yard complex. The provision of fresh water to naval vessels was a prime function of the Victualling Yards: large reservoirs were provided on these sites.
(Evans, D: THE ROYAL CLARENCE YARD - some buildings reconsidered: Gosport Borough Council - 1999: Coad, J: THE ROYAL DOCKYARDS - 1690/1850: RCHME - 1989)
