Listed Building: HMS NELSON: GYMNASIUM (BUILDING NUMBER 81) (1387143)

Formerly known as: HMS Victory QUEEN STREET. Military drill hall, now naval gymnasium. Late C19, believed to be 1893, Superintendent Engineer Colonel Sir Henry Pilkington RE. North-west elevation probably c1900; wartime damage of c1940 made good; further alterations late C20, including rebuilding of part of south-east elevation 1992. Red brick in English bond with ashlar dressings. Welsh slate roofs with continuous roof lights over hall and tall, corniced, chimneys. PLAN/EXTERIOR: large rectangular block of 2 storeys, parts with attic, with 6-stage clock tower at north-west corner. Plinth with ashlar offset; ashlar sill and lintel bands to windows which have tripartite keystones, brick apron panels, 12-pane sashes, and are segmental-arched on ground floor of north-west and south-east elevations. Ashlar architraves to doorways and to tower and attic windows, the attic windows having segmental ashlar pediments. Ashlar eaves cornice and coping to pediments and towers. North-west elevation: balanced 13-bay elevation, having central door in corniced architrave; wide, projecting, pedimented bays 4 and 10 each having a full-height round-arched entrance, set back door, and blank cartouche to tympanum. Projecting pyramidal-roofed tower of 2 storeys and attic at left end. At right end, projecting clock tower with angle pilasters; round-arched entrance; tripled slit windows below clock on each side; dentilled cornice below upper stage which has 3-bay round-arched ashlar arcade to each side; and cornice below swept pyramidal metal roof with finial. South-west elevation: at centre, projecting pedimented 3-bay section of 2 storeys and attic has tripled round-arched entrances with corniced architraves. Similar projecting section at right end, apparently subsequently altered, has entrance on left with console-bracketed hood and narrow windows. North-east elevation similar, with 2 entrances in central projection and 1st floor of 8 left-hand bays rebuilt after 1940s bomb-damage. South-east elevation: the 5 right-hand bays have been recessed a short distance (1992). Projecting machicolated embattled towers at ends and centre, the latter taller, all with pyramidal roofs. Tripled windows to towers, otherwise paired, all with brick pilaster jambs with ashlar plinths and capitals supporting keyed archivolts. The towers have segmental-arched windows, those of end towers with decorative tympana, on ground floor dated 1885 (believed to be reused). INTERIOR: the original 2 halls (drill hall and gymnasium) are now all one space, with fluted palm-leaf cast-iron columns supporting steel lattice beams to iron roof trusses. The existing north-west elevation has been built across the original end elevation. HISTORY: the building was originally the drill hall for the Duke of Connaught's Wessex Regiment, and one of the window tympana of the south-east elevation bears a lamb, the device of the Wessex Regiment. Covered drill halls were introduced in the 1880s, for drill practice and manoeuvres in wet weather. Part of the first naval barracks at Portsmouth, comparable with the large drill halls at Chatham and Devonport.