Description

SU 6300 NW THE PARADE
HM Naval Base
774-1/29/241 Nos 1-9 (Consecutive) Long Row
(Building Nos 1/124-132)
and attached walls

GV II*

Includes: Spithead House (No.9), THE PARADE HM NAVAL BASE
Terrace of 9 dockyard officials' houses, now part offices and part accommodation, with attached garden walls. 1715-19, probably by the master shipwright (Coad); stuccoed and porches added c1833; south end remodelled 1832 to form residence of the Admiral Superintendent of the Dockyard; later alterations. Red brick, front and sides stucco; concealed slate roof with stuccoed brick chimneys. Early Georgian style. PLAN: double-depth plan with front offices and lateral stairs, and rear service range round a courtyard. The outer houses form mirror-image semi- detached pairs.
EXTERIOR: 3 storeys with basement. Central and end houses (Nos 1, 5 and 9) project slightly. Each house of 5 symmetrical bays with central entrance, but no.9, at right end, enlarged to 8 bays with return, entrance, elevation of 4 + 3 bays. Plinth with segmental-arched basement windows (some louvred, some with small-pane casements. 12-pane sashes in reveals with projecting sills; shorter unequally-hung 9-pane sashes to 2nd floor; most ground-floor windows, and some others, replaced by 6-pane sashes. Parapet has recess over each window and flat coping. Entrances: stone steps with replacement iron railings; wooden porches with paired pilasters supporting deep entablatures with cornices and blocking courses, half-glazed double doors with glazing bars and 3-pane overlights, 6-pane side-windows; inner original doors of 6 raised and fielded panels and including 3-pane light at top. No.9 has bracketed architraves to windows; eaves band with cornice instead of parapet; and cornices to chimneys. T o its right return, entrance portico with paired fluted columns, entablature with blocking course, and late C20 glazed roof. Set-back 3-bay section on right has 5 windows to ground floor,3 above, the outer 1st-floor windows in corbelled canted bays. A lower 2- storey wing with eight 1st-floor windows, one blind, set back on right. Left return (No.1): side porch. Rear largely as completed, brick with segmental-arched windows with 18-pane sashes and smaller 12-pane sashes to 2nd floor. Central round-arched stair windows with keystones. Various additions.
INTERIOR: some original panelled doors, wall panelling, and panelled window reveals with shutters. Marble fireplaces (probably early-mid C19) with pilasters and roundels to corners. Cornices. Moulded architraves with acorn and oak-leaf decorative motifs. Dog-leg stairs in panelled stair wells with closed strings, square newels, column-on-vase balusters, moulded tread ends and moulded hand-rails; acorn pendant to that of No.6. Nos 1 and 2 have replacement stick balusters and handrails with spiral curtails. No.9 (Spithead House) has similar fireplaces and architraves; panelled doors and window reveals with shutters; decorative cornices, friezes and chandelier roundels to ceilings. Entrance vestibule has curved corner niches and inner double door with overlight. Stair hall has curving open-well stair with open-string, balustrade with decorative balusters between panels of latticed ironwork with floral bosses; moulded handrail with spiral curtail on stick balusters; on 2nd floor, balustrade heightened by added band. SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: attached garden walls: at front, stuccoed wall ramps down from 1st-floor height on left to form wall enclosing front area, coped, and sweeping up to 5 entrances, set in front of each pair of houses, which have square gate piers, projecting intermediate piers. At right end matching wall curves around garden of No.9, dying in No.19 Store (qv), and having carriage and pedestrian entrances which have rusticated piers with plinths, pyramidal capstones and lanterns. At rear, the garden walls are approx. 2 metres high, mostly rendered and parts rebuilt; parts with pilasters, ramping and oversailing triangular coping (in same style as the dockyard wall of 1704-11, qv); east (rear) wall mostly rebuilt, but at No.7 retaining original pilastered walling with a segmental-arched board door of ovals (similar to that in Admiralty House (qv)).
HISTORY: the terrace originally accommodated the principal Dockyard officials, ( eg. Master Shipwright and Master Attendant). When the Admiral Superintendent, formerly the Navy Board's Commissioner, was displaced by the Post Admiral from Admiralty House, No.9 was enlarged for him. Part of the terrace is on the site of the old moat and fishponds dating to reconstructions in 1665/6. The garden of No.9 includes part of the original Commissioner's garden of 1666 and some of the dockyard moat of the same period. One of the fine series of dockyard terraces which show a very early development of composed palace fronts to a terrace, and pre-datin.g for example Queen Square in Bath. This is a significant design in a national context of the development of the terraced house.
(Sources: Coad J: Historic Architecture of HM Naval Base Portsmouth 1700- 1850: Portsmouth: 1981: plates 5 & 7; Coad J: The Royal Dockyards 1690- 1850: Aldershot: 1989: 52-54; Lloyd DW: Buildings of Portsmouth and its Environs: Portsmouth: 1974: 671).

SU 6300 NW THE PARADE
HM Naval Base
Spithead House (No 9)
774-1/29/241

GV II*

See under: Long Row (Building Nos 1/124-132) and attached walls, Nos 1-9 THE PARADE HM NAVAL BASE

Listing NGR: SU6310400676

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q17554895

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