Listed Building: NUMBER 5 BOATHOUSE (BUILDINGS NUMBERS 1/27 AND 1/28) (1272290)

Masthouse then boathouse and sail loft, now museum. 1882 (Riley) on site of earlier boathouse. Timber framed with weatherboard cladding and corrugated iron roofs. EXTERIOR= 2 parallel ranges of 1 storey, 2:2 x 12 bays, built over Mast Pond (qv); with 3rd, shorter, range (former sail loft) set back against right return, originally of 2 storeys with loft. Small-pane wooden windows in flush wood frames. Board doors. Bracketed boxed eaves. The 2 main ranges are built on a wood and iron substructure which has iron posts with wooden braces to iron girders and wooden joists. South-west elevation: the 2 main ranges have 4 original wide entrances replaced by (20 doors, small-pane glazing, and vertical boarding. 2 louvred openings above to left range. Hipped roofs. Range set back on right has central late (20 door in original surround with bracketed wooden pentice; flanking continuous 4-pane windows with door to left; 3 small-pane windows above; and 2 strap-hinged loading doors in gable. Rear: main range has diagonally-tooled stone plinth with granite kerbstones; 5 bays of continuous board doors or replacement vertical boarding; louvred gable. Shorter range as before. Left return: bracketed iron balcony; 12 windows. Right return: main range has late (20 door and 5 windows on right of shorter range and 3 windows on left. INTERIOR: square wooden columns straight-braced to longitudinal and cross beams. Roof trusses have braced wooden king posts and vertical secondary braces; raking plank wind braces. HISTORY: one of a pair of boathouse with No.7 (qv). With the Lower Boat House, Chatham (qv), the last surviving examples of a once-common type, used for building and storing of small boats. (Sources: Coad J: The Royal Dockyards 1690-1850: Aldershot: 1989: 145; The Buildings of England: Lloyd D: Hampshire and the Isle of Wight: Harmondsworth: 1985: 409-410; The Portsmouth Papers: Riley R(: The Evolution of the Docks & Industrial Buildings in Portsmouth: Portsmouth: 1985: 11). Selected Sources Books and journals Coad, J G, The Royal Dockyards 1690-1850: Architecture and Engineering Works of the Sailing Navy, (1989), 145 Pevsner, N, The Buildings of England: Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, (1967), 409-410 Riley, R C, 'The Portsmouth Papers' in The Evolution of the Docks and Industrial Buildings in Portsmouth, (1985), 11