Listed Building: NUMBER 25 STORE (BUILDING NUMBER 1/118) (1244578)

Stores and workshops, now one. 1782, altered. Red brick in Flemish bond with ashlar dressings. Hipped slate roofs. Mid Georgian style. PLAN: two linked free-standing parallel ranges running west-east, with intermediate courtyard. EXTERIOR: 2 storeys. 17 x 9 bays. Ashlar plinth, 1st-floor band, string on stepped dentilled brick eaves band, flat coping to parapet, and cornices to pediments. 12-pane sash windows in reveals with stone sills. Wide panelled double doors with louvred vents at top in wooden architraves with console-bracketed cornices; 1st-floor loading doors in quoined, raised, ashlar surrounds with cornices. Rainwater pipes with bulbous heads. South elevation: bays arranged 2:5:3:5:2, ends and centre projecting under pediments, that at centre with blind oculus, those at ends with blind oeil-de-boeuf. Doorways to bays 5, 9 and 13 and central loading door. Rear similar but doorways now windows and the loading door, below segmental brick arch, now with bridge to sail loft (building no.11109). East elevation: bays arranged 3:3:3. Centre is recessed and has central window with flanking doors, that on left bricked up, that on right with double board door and fanlight with radial glazing bars in keyed round- arched surround with imposts. Each outer section has central door as before. West end partially obscured by addition linking this building to No.24 Store (qv). INTERIOR: on ground floor square chamfered wooden posts, carrying large- scantling beams. In north range original wooden stair with large- scantling plain balusters, newels and handrail. 1st floor: board-lined walls to south range; roof trusses have collared queen posts, the collars supporting king posts. The courtyard elevations have had additions and alterations, but retain original windows, end entrance-archways, rainwater-pipes, and along the back of the south range survives an early lean-to stable addition of 5 bays with wooden columns on padstones and hipped roof, the formerly open bays now mostly infilled. HISTORY: originally one of 4 similar stores and workshops built to a courtyard plan as part of the dockyard modernisation programme. This was the south-eastern block and is the best surviving, being the only one still to retain its original form of two ranges with central courtyard. It accommodated wheelwrights, block and capstan makers, with offices and stores. The south-western and north-western blocks survive as No.24 and No.33 Stores, Main Road (qqv): the north-eastern block (Building No. 1/149, not included), suffered from 1940s bomb damage. Though altered, this forms the best example of an unusual type of combined workshop and store, and an interesting attempt to rationalise dockyard workshop activities in a formal arrangement of self-contained buildings. (Sources: The Buildings of England: Lloyd D: Hampshire and the Isle of Wight: Harmondsworth: 1985: 414 ; The Portsmouth Papers: Riley RC: The Evolution of the Docks and Industrial Buildings in Portsmouth: Portsmouth: 1985: 10 ; Coad J: Historic Architecture of HM Naval Base Portsmouth 1700-1850: Portsmouth: 1981: 36, plate 30; Coad J: The Royal Dockyards 1690-1850: Aldershot: 1989: 153). Selected Sources Books and journals Coad, J , Historic Architecture of H M Naval Base Portsmouth 1700-1850, (1981), 36 Coad, J G, The Royal Dockyards 1690-1850: Architecture and Engineering Works of the Sailing Navy, (1989), 153 Pevsner, N, The Buildings of England: Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, (1967), 414 Riley, R C, 'The Portsmouth Papers' in The Evolution of the Docks and Industrial Buildings in Portsmouth, (1985), 10