Building 124 (Mixing House) , Rnad Bull Point

Reasons for Designation

A unique survival from the Napoleonic Wars, built for the recycling of powder brought in from warships.

Details

740-1/0/10059 RNAD BULL POINT 17-APR-09 Building 124 (Mixing House), RNAD Bull Point

GV II Gunpowder mixing house, later store, now office. 1804. Rubble with corrugated sheet roof.

PLAN: single-depth plan.

EXTERIOR: single storey; 5-window range. Wider central section has a wide, central doorway to the rear with a segmental relieving arch to double half-glazed doors, and segmental-arched 3/3-pane sashes each side. S elevation has 3 small central windows with C20 glazing and taller 6/6-pane sashes to the narrower ends, all with segmental-arched heads. Small doorways in either end, that to the E with a brick arch.

HISTORY: Built as part of the St Budeaux Royal Powder Mills, which was incorporated from the 1850s in the new Bull Point naval ordnance yard for Devonport Dockyard, completed in 1854. This provided storage for 40,000 barrels of powder in an integrated complex including a floating magazine where powder was unloaded and the St Budeaux laboratory where it was checked and processed, before being taken to the Bull Point magazines.

Bull Point, located just to the north of the Royal Navy's new Steam Yard at Keyham, was the last great project of the Board of Ordnance, which was abolished in 1856. In contrast to other yards, Bull Point was from the outset provided with a set of buildings planned and dedicated to the various functions for the processing as well as the storage of the new types of ordnance which had a revolutionary impact on the design of naval ships and fortifications. All the buildings - mostly in ashlar with rock-faced dressings and fronting an avenue to the S of the magazines - are stylistically coherent with the magazines themselves, and comprise both the finest ensemble in any of the Ordnance Yards and a remarkable example of integrated factory planning of the period.

The only surviving part of the earlier St Budeaux powder works at Devonport. The potentially hazardous work of examining, restoving, dusting and remixing gunpowder could not be carried on in such proximity to the towns and advantage was taken of the local topography of the areas to provide dispersed locations to and from which the powder could be taken by water transport. At Plymouth all the powder processing facilities were concentrated at St Budeaux safely up the Hamoaze. Several plans survive of the establishment, whose buildings were of the same design as those at Stamshaw and Little Horsea in Portsmouth (where only below-ground remains can be traced). Earth traverses reinforced with masonry were used to minimise the effects of any explosion, and the boiler which supplied steam to the stoves was placed between two semicircular traverses. The Mixing House of 1804 (Building 124), is the only building surviving on the site, the footings of the other structures being clearly visible. Mixing houses were where the raw materials for gunpowder were combined as a preliminary to being incorporated in the mill. By 1866 it was used as a dining room, and in the early C20 as a store.

(PRO WO 44/307, 44/643; Hants Record Office COL 18/1, SD1)

Legacy

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

Legacy System number:

500716

Legacy System:

LBS

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