The Royal Arsenal
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CHAPTER 3 The Royal Arsenal The Royal Arsenal, Woolwich, is among Britain’s most driven and cyclopean machinery in capacious sheds for the important historic sites. It played a central military and manufacture of ever larger guns and ever more ammuni- River Thames industrial role throughout the state’s imperial phase, from tion. Subsequent development extended further and fur- ARGYLL ROAD the late seventeenth century to the early twentieth. There ther eastwards. There were reforms, notably those insti- are many worthwhile histories, those of the institution, of gated through the Morley Report of 1887, and the Arsenal MARLBOROUGH ROAD ROMNEY RD 50 war-making, of ballistics, of landscape, of labour – some reached its peak of production and employment during 49 HOPTON ROAD 48 have been told, others await exposition at the time of writ- the First World War; the huge Central Offices complex 45 47 ing. In a mere chapter here it is not possible to do more of 1905–11 reflects the enormous size 1( ,285 acres) of 46 CRESCENT HARDINGE than assess the site and, through its buildings, adumbrate the Arsenal at that time. Thereafter decline set in, and, 36 ARMSTRONG STREET wider stories. Even as a topography this is only a partial after many re-evaluations, what had become the Royal Grand Store account; the Arsenal grew well beyond its original enclave Ordnance Factory, Woolwich, closed in 1967. Most of the 37 CADOGAN ROAD 25 41 21 in the parish of Woolwich, extending eastwards to areas eastern lands were given up, much to the Greater London 18 not covered here, across Plumstead and into Erith.1 Council for Thamesmead. The western enclave remained 40 20 HASTINGS STREET Wellington Park 17 BERESFORD ST Lately rendered quiet and suburban, the Arsenal once a Ministry of Defence facility up to 1994. Regenerative ARSENAL WAY Firepower thronged and thrummed with the labour and noise of development since then has included the establishment 19 heavy industry. Its fame is as a factory, but manufacturing of Firepower (the Royal Artillery Museum) and the Royal Laboratory 23 emerged only gradually. Riverside marshland to the east of Greenwich Heritage Centre, and a substantial housing Pavilions medieval Woolwich had become part of the grounds of a programme has been undertaken by Berkeley Homes, WARREN LANE 22 DUKE OF io Centre large Tudor house, Tower Place. From its nearby depot at involving the conversion of a number of historic buildings WELLINGTON Gun Wharf, the Board of Ordnance used open space east as well as some large new buildings. 10 Royal Carriage AVENUE of the house, part of it a rabbit warren, for the proving of The account of the Arsenal here presents the site’s his- No. 1 STREET Royal Brass Dial Arch Factory guns. A riverside battery was built to defend against Dutch tory chronologically, building by building, allowing brief Foundry invasion before the Board acquired the lands outright in accounts of alterations and additions to disrupt the tem- 11 1671 for the formation of a new and larger storage depot. poral sequence. The chapter covers an area that extends Before long the ‘Warren’ came to be used for other ord- beyond the parish boundary to take in the whole of the Gunnery House nance purposes. The making of ammunition commenced western enclave to which the Arsenal pulled back in 1967 Verbruggen’s io Centre Middlegate in 1696 in a laboratory relocated from Greenwich. Large- (Ills 115, 116, 134). This embraces all the establishment’s House House scale gunmaking came alongside in 1717 with the erection listed buildings and its conservation area. Ministry of ARSENAL WAY 7 of the Royal Brass Foundry, part of a consciously grandi- Defence building numbers are still in use. CORNWALLIS ROAD ose round of improvements. Gun carriages were also made. Beresford PLUMSTEAD ROAD From its beginnings around this time the Royal Regiment Gate of Artillery was based here, providing a workforce at what was also a place of science and experiment; here too what The Warren became the Royal Military Academy was founded. Both these branches of the Ordnance moved up to Woolwich Common in the later Georgian period. The Board’s river- Tower Place Ft 400 side working functions developed into separate depart- M 120 ments – the Royal Laboratory, the Royal Brass Foundry In the 1530s, soon after the Crown had begun to build (later Royal Gun Factory), the Royal Carriage Department ships in Woolwich, (Sir) Martin Bowes, a wealthy gold- 115. The Royal Arsenal, 2007 (showing Woolwich—Plumstead parish boundary and Ministry of Defence building numbers) and the Storekeeper’s Department. In the first decade of smith and key figure at the Royal Mint, began buying the nineteenth century vast wartime works were under- lands in Woolwich and Plumstead, taking advantage of taken, including a new wharf and the complex of river- the Dissolution to build up a riverside estate on the east side military warehouses known, accurately enough, as side of Woolwich, within easy reach of the royal court at the Grand Store. Lands to the east on Plumstead marshes Greenwich. There were already houses and watermills on were annexed, and in 1805 the unique and increasingly the land, but Bowes built anew and by 1545, when he was vital complex was designated the Royal Arsenal. Lord Mayor, the mansion that later came to be known as Another period of concentrated building activity came Tower Place was standing on the site now occupied by in the 1850s, especially in the aftermath of the Crimean Building 40 (the former Academy). Bowes’s house was War. Intensive modernization was undertaken with steam- a north–south range of two storeys and garrets that was CHAPTER THREE THE ROYAL ARSENAL N A Board Room/(Royal) Military Academy B (Royal) Laboratory C Royal Brass Foundry D Storehouse E Workshops F Fireworks Barn D Carriage G House Yard H Barracks G Shot yard J Proof Department K (Royal) Carriage Department A L Repository M Stables D N Guard House A B O Offices D B E G C H N F Ft 500 M 150 1725 N E 116. The Royal Arsenal from the west, 2008 JE G B D D entered from the west or town side. It had a traditional sold in 1638 and again several more times in subsequent G A 2 kitchen-passage-hall-parlour layout, with a further and decades. M D greater parlour under a great chamber at the upper or By 1651 the Board of Ordnance, which had long had a B north end, off which a rear corner turret offered views depot in Woolwich at Gun Wharf (see pages 37–9), was E down Gallions Reach. The east elevation had an oriel win- being permitted by the owners of Tower Place to prove K dow at the end of a first-floor gallery that returned along guns on the warren. Among the immediate consequences D L B the south or service end, where, with marked asymmetry, of the Dutch assault on the Medway in June 1667 was fur- C K an octagonal tower rose five storeys to an ogee cap. This was ther use of the site for a substantial but temporary sixty- G C M probably built simply for its prospects and as an architec- gun battery, hurriedly built under the command of Prince N G tural statement, though one of a conservative nature (Ills Rupert, the King’s cousin and Captain-General – there may M O G G 118, 129). The house backed onto marshland that Bowes have been a precedent for a battery here from the prepa- G H partially enclosed as a private garden and rabbit warren, rations of 1588 for the Spanish Armada. Rupert’s wooden H with orchards, ponds and moats. It was more a gentleman’s platform with earthworks ran along the river bank in front M lodge than a country seat, though, with fifteen hearths in of the moated orchards, facing the Gallions Reach approach the 1660s, it was the largest dwelling in Woolwich. to London. John Webb, concurrently engaged as the King’s Ft 500 1569 After Bowes’s death the estate came in into the architect at Greenwich Palace, oversaw the work. This was M 150 possession of (Sir) George Barne, a Muscovy merchant and perhaps only because Sir Bernard de Gomme, the Dutch 1797 governor of the Russia Company, the son of a Lord Mayor Chief Engineer in the Ordnance office, and his close asso- of London and later himself a Lord Mayor. His grand- ciate (Sir) Jonas Moore, the fen-drainage surveyor and daughter, Anne Barne, married Sir William Lovelace, and mathematician whom the Board had taken on to help with their sons, Richard and Francis Lovelace, later to find fame wartime fortifications, were too busy elsewhere.3 as a poet and a colonial governor respectively, may have (Sir) William Pritchard, an Eltham ropemaker and 117. The Royal Arsenal (Woolwich Warren to 1805). Plans on this and following pages been born at Tower Place in 1618 and 1621. The estate was ordnance contractor, may also have been involved in the show the layout of the site in Woolwich in 1725, 1797, 1814, 1858, 1914 and 1994 CHAPTER THREE THE ROYAL ARSENAL N N A Board Room/(Royal) Military Academy D B (Royal) Laboratory O J C Royal Brass Foundry Power J D D Storehouse Station Y D D N E Workshops Grand Store F Fireworks Barn D D D D G House D D T H Barracks R D J Proof Department D S K (Royal) Carriage Department E R O O W L Repository W B B T J M Stables R X N Guard House Z O E O Offices P Engineers Department B B Y Q Paper Cartridge Factory E R Shell Foundry/Bullet Factory D K S (Royal) Gun Factory K B K C P K T Forge V U Patttern Room V B G C G V Sawmill G M G M W Rolling Mill D D N K G D X Radial Crane O M K E M Boring Mill Y O G G Z Mounting Shed N A G River Thames N Thames Ft 500 Ft 500 River 1814 M 150 1914 M 150 1 mile/1.6km (approx.) Full