Description

1137/0/10102 PRIDDY'S HARD
19-JAN-1990 Quick Fire Shell Store (Building 433)
approx. 12m N of 'A' Magazine, Museum
Buildings

(Formerly listed as:
PRIDDY'S HARD
Museum Building)

GV II*

Part of museum complex, formerly ammunition store, incorporating N wall to Magazine enclosure. 1889 (including 1770-6 magazine enclosure wall), brick in English bond, painted to W gable, slate roof on timber trusses.

A simple gabled structure, using the N traverse to the former 'A' Magazine as its southern enclosure wall; in 10 bays, expressed externally on the N side by piers, joined by a brick eaves cornice to provide a series of panels containing square 9-pane casements set to brick voussoirs and with stone sill, in eight bays, and pairs of plank doors to segmental heads in bays 2 and 8. The W end has a central pair of deep-set doors below a gable loading-door, now a window with fixed plain glass, and square 12-pane to the left; the long S return is plain, the earlier wall having been raised some 8 courses to the new eaves level. The E end has a pair of doors with 9-pane overlights to a fine rubbed brick head, below a small oculus, and with a blocked 9-pane window to the right. There are moulded cast-iron gutters, and moulded wood barge boards.

INTERIOR: retains not only the queen-post trusses, but also the lateral sliding derrick cranes incorporated in longitudinal cradling. Close-set rafters carry diagonal boarding, all limewashed or painted.

HISTORICAL NOTE: comprising a wing to the N of the magazine, this was built in c1889 as an ammunition store for the quick-firing guns being increasingly used on naval vessels: after the 1879 Shell Store (Building 303), it is the best surviving example of an ordnance yard shell store. It incorporates part of the original magazine enclosure wall and retains its original traveller crane.

The magazines and related structures at Priddy's Hard date from the late 18th century. The site's expansion from the mid 19th century was closely related to the development of land and sea artillery and the navy's transition from the age of sail, powder and solid shot to the Dreadnought class of the early 1900s. Priddy's Hard retains the best-preserved range of structures that relate to this remarkable history of continual enlargement and adaptation, one that encompasses that of Britain's dominance as a sea power on a global scale.

For further historical details on this site, see the description for 'A' Magazine.

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q17534031

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  Somerset: South and West (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Worcestershire Revised Edition (Buildings of England) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Period property manual, victorian house manual 2 books collection set by ian rock
• 
  Yorkshire: York and the East Riding (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Sussex: East with Brighton and Hove (Buildings of England) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Derbyshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)