Marchwood Yacht Club (Former Entrance Lodges) And Attached Wall and Gates

Details

MARCHWOOD

1860/5/33 MAGAZINE LANE 21-MAY-85 Marchwood Yacht Club (former entrance lodges) and attached wall and gates (Formerly listed as: MAGAZINE LANE Entrance lodge and gates at former Roy al Naval Armaments Depot)

GV II
Entrance lodges and gates, now club building. Dated 1814 on foundation stone. Red brick walls, roofs of grey slate laid to diminishing courses, except to porticos which are felted. Twin rectangular buildings flanking a forecourt, the west side closed by a brick wall with central entrance gates. Each lodge has two 6/6-pane sash windows (glazing bars) flanking a central door with overlight. All openings have flat gauged brick arches. To the front of each lodge a portico supported on 6 cast iron columns, probably dating from 1850s. The main roof above hipped to front and rear, with central brick chimney stack. West forecourt wall of red brick terminating in square piers with sunk panels and surmounted by urns. Plain iron gates between, with spiked terminals.

HISTORY: The lodge to the north was built as a guard house and engine house, that to the south as a watch house and office. Marchwood was conceived in 1811 as a store depot like Tipner (Porstmouth). Potential canal communications from Southampton water were the Redbridge-Andover, Northampton-Winchester and Bursledon-Botley navigations. This was to be a 20,000 barrel magazine with two 10,000 barrel magazines the preferred disposition. In the event, and after deliberation resulting in the adoption of plans submitted in 1811 by Sir William Congreve (the Comptroller of the Royal Laboratory in Woolwich) over those by General Fisher (commanding officer of the Portsmouth Royal Engineers' Department), 3 magazines each with a 6,800 capacity were built, with a small internal L-shaped canal for moving barrels by barge and a centrally-placed Shifting House. The shortcomings revealed through the Crimean War brought about the decision to increase storage capability, and additional magazines were built at Marchwood, Tipner and Upnor. In July 1853, the CRE Portsmouth had been asked to prepare a report on the expense of making Marchwood serviceable again. The magazines were ordered in September to be made fit to receive powder from Dover, and in November the floor of No. 3 Magazine was ordered to be made good before the establishment was re-established as a Powder Station and Officers appointed. This, effectively the second foundation of Marchwood, was marked by a vast increase in its storage: four new magazines, three of 14,400 and one of 9,600 barrels capacity, were built in 1856-7. A Times article of 1864 noted that Marchwood was 'the largest magazine in the Kingdom', with a capacity of 76,000 barrels of powder. The establishment began to be wound down soon afterwards, there being 45 employees in 1898. B, E, F and G magazines were destroyed by the Luftwaffe in June 1940, and the Admiralty's use of the depot declined steeply after 1945: it was closed in 1961.

(Roger Bowdler, Former Board of Ordnance Gunpowder Magazines, Magazine Lane, Marchwood, Hampshire, Historical Analysis and Research Team, English Heritage, 1997)

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

143442

Legacy System:

LBS

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