Description

TQ 4476 PLUMSTEAD ROAD SE18
(North side)

786/9/368 Royal Arsenal
Armstrong Gun Factory
26/07/90

GV II

Gun foundry and turning shop, disused. 1856, by David Murray, engineer, and built in association with Sir William Armstrong, between 1855 and 1863; altered 1911. Polychromatic English garden wall bond brick, yellow stocks with black and orange dressings, cast-iron internal frame, hipped roof with ridge vents.
PLAN: H-plan with central porch, rear courtyard enclosed by an arcade rebuilt 1911.
EXTERIOR: Italianate style. Single storey; 4:6:3:6:4-bay range. Central porch and projecting end wings, with red brick plinth, modillion impost bands and cornice of dentilled triangles, with a parapet. Porch has wide outer buttresses, a round-arched doorway with alternate red and yellow voussoirs, blocked fanlight and mid C20 steel doors, with gauged brick keyed round-arched windows below the impost band, timber frames with roundels at the glazing bar crossings, 2 windows to the sides, and a sunken panel above each; flanking ranges have tall round-arched windows with metal-framed windows, and cast-iron plates with dentils set within the brick impost band; the parapet was added 1911. The returns are symmetrical 9-bay ranges with central bays set forward as the entrance. INTERIOR: axial row of heavy rectangular-section panelled cast-iron columns in the end ranges, formerly for the gantry cranes, with upper round columns connected by segmental-arched cast-iron ties carrying rolled iron roof trusses with king and queen ties. Similar columns formerly extended along the main range.
HISTORICAL NOTE: Armstrong developed the method of manufacturing rifled guns with stronger barrels, which were adopted by both the army and navy and produced under licence at Woolwich. This building was the gun turnery, with gantry cranes along aisles either side of the columns; the adjoining forge has been demolished. An impressive example of Ordnance architecture, in the Baroque tradition established by the Ordnance Board in the early C18, and an important building in the history of British ordnance.
(Hogg O F G, The Royal Arsenal, Oxford, 1963, p.1416; RCHME report 1994)

Listing NGR: TQ4421279288

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q27080556

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

• 
  The Listed Buildings and Other Principal Structures at the Royal Gunpowder Mills Waltham Abbey
• 
  Northamptonshire: Buildings of England Series (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Specifications for Building Conservation: Volume 1: External Structure: Practical Examples v. 2
• 
  Gloucestershire 2: The Vale and The Forest of Dean: Vale and Forest of Dean Pt. 2 (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  County Durham (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England) by Elizabeth Williamson Nikolaus Pevsner(1983-03-11)
• 
  Bristol (Pevsner Architectural Guides: City Guides)