Millwrights Shop (Building SO66) At Devonport Dock Yard

Details

PLYMOUTH

740-1/0/10003 SOUTH YARD 04-MAR-08 Millwright's Shop (Building SO66) at D evonport Dock Yard

GV II Former millwrights' shop, now offices. 1834-7 with late C19 or early C20 alterations and a late C20 addition. Built to the designs of George Ledwell Taylor, architect to the Navy Board.

MATERIALS: Cast iron framed building faced with Plymouth limestone ashlar. Metal-framed windows with small panes. There is a stone parapet to the hipped corrugated iron roof.

PLAN: Rectangular plan of five by nine bays. It has a single storey ashlar structure built against the east end of its north wall which seems to have been added in the late C19 or early C20 and probably formerly linked the Millwrights' Shop with the North Smithery. It is considered of lesser interest than these two principal buildings. An extension, built on a slightly different alignment, was added on the south side in circa 1980. It is not of special interest.

EXTERIOR: This two storey building has clasped pilasters to the corners and a plat band to the parapet. The five bay west elevation has a plat band over the double doorway in the second bay from the right. The other bays each have a tri-partite metal-framed and small-paned window with thick mullions and a central transom to the ground floor. There are nine windows to the first floor, each with central-hung metal-framed casements. They have square-headed architraves and are set to the cill band. There are similar first floor windows to the return elevations. The south elevation is obscured by the 1980s office block addition.

INTERIOR: The southern two thirds of the ground floor originally contained the heavy plant, while the two bays that make up the northern third of the building were formerly occupied by, from west to east, the drilling shop; the engine houses in the centre (containing pumping and rotative engines), and the boiler house to the rear (east). Light turning and pattern-making, models and plans were located on the first floor. This area has now been converted to offices with the addition of internal partitions. All machinery has been removed. The first floor is supported by stone corbels, cast iron columns, girders and braces, and cast iron flanges at each corner of the building. The first floor has converted to offices but retains the columns that rise through the building and support the timber king post roof.

HISTORY: The importance of Plymouth as a base for English fleets in the Western Approaches was recognised in the late C17 and the construction of a dockyard was instigated by William III. During the C19 the dockyards became geared to the incorporation of new industrial techniques and processes. With the transition between sail and steam during the first half of the C19, and from wooden to iron ships during the second half, the naval dockyards expanded and radically altered in character. Within the existing yards many of the old smitheries and forges became redundant, and new types of engineering workshops, some pioneering novel construction systems, were replacing them.

Steam-powered engineering shops for the navy were first established at Portsmouth in 1829. At about the same time it was decided that a properly planned facility for making boilers and other repairs, both marine and stationary, was considered necessary. The Millwrights' Shop, or the Boiler House as it was generally known, was designed by George Ledwell Taylor, architect to the Navy Board, in 1834-7 as part of the modernisation of the dockyard. It was built in South Yard at Devonport to house the steam-powered lathes, planing, shearing, and bending machines used for the manufacture of boilers and for engine repairs, and was sited adjacent to the forges and furnaces of the adjacent North Smithery. It contained two steam engines: one that replaced the horse engines that were formerly used for pumping the dry docks and which also blew air into the forges in the North Smithery, and another that powered the drilling machines, lathes, boring machinery and grindstones in the Millwrights' Shop. By the mid-C19 there was a falling off in work at Devonport as resources were switched to Woolwich, leading to the eclipse of this pioneering workshop.

SOURCES: Evans, D., `Building the Steam Navy' (2004) Lake, J. & Douet, J., `Thematic Survey of English Naval Dockyards Summary Report, Thematic Listing Programme' (1998), English Heritage

REASON FOR DESIGNATION DECISION: The Millwrights' Shop (SO66) is designated at Grade II for the following principal reasons: * A very significant example of early-C19 industrial architecture that is technologically advanced compared to civil examples of the period * Despite alterations in the late C20, it is a particularly rare example of a specialist workshop dating from the formative years of the engineering industry * Its historical significance in terms of the development of the steam navy in the early to mid-C19 * It forms a cogent grouping with the adjacent North Smithery, dry docks and other dockyard buildings

Legacy

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

Legacy System number:

504055

Legacy System:

LBS

Sources

Books and journals
Evans, D, Building the Steam Navy: Dockyards, Technology and the Creation of the Victorian Battle Fleet 1830 to 1906, (2004)

End of official list entry

All text content is available under the Open Government Licence v3.0 , except where otherwise stated. Any supplied maps are © Crown Copyright [and database rights] 2026 OS AC0000815036 and may not be reproduced without permission.