page_title: Priddy's Hard
section_title: Twentieth century
hierarchical_section_title: Priddy's Hard / History / Twentieth century
caption_attribution_description: English: View Priddy's Hard Gunwharf.
context_page_description: Priddy's Hard is an area of Gosport, in Hampshire, England now being developed for housing with part of the site retained as a museum. However, for some two hundred years it was a restricted-access site; first becoming a fort and then an armaments depot for Royal Navy and British Army weapons, explosives and other stores.
context_section_description: The site was altered continuously during the early 20th century, as new types of ammunition and propellant came into use; however, an explosion in the New Shell Store in 1904 raised concern over the site's proximity to the Royal Dockyard and eventually led to the establishment of a new storage facility north of Priddy's Hard at Bedenham (where construction began in 1908).
  Priddy's Hard itself then focussed on the filling of shells and cartridges, rather than on bulk storage. During World War I the sudden increase in demand led to additional filling rooms for cartridges, tubes and artillery fuzes saw added in rows around the cordite magazines (west of the old site); there were also new storage buildings added in this area for mines, bombs and depth charges. New explosives such as trotyl (TNT) and amatol were provided with storage and processing rooms near the shell-filling rooms. A mainline rail connection was first provided in 1914 and three years later a long 'transfer shed' was built alongside the New Shell Store to enable the direct loading of filled shells and other items on to rolling stock.
  1923 saw the closure of H.M. Gunwharf, Portsmouth; its naval facilities and personnel were all transferred to Priddy's Hard, which thereafter became the senior local depot with overall responsibility not only for supply of ammunition, as previously, but also for servicing and repairing all types of naval ordnance equipment from machine guns to depth charge throwers. To accommodate this additional work (naval gun repair in particular) a 'New Gunwharf' was opened at Priddy's Hard (north of the original site, to the east of Green Lane) consisting of a factory, foundry, smithery and other facilities. It also dealt with small arms repairs and included a testing range for rifles, pistols and machine guns; and there was a repair shop for locomotives and other rolling stock used around the depot.
  Priddy's Hard was fully utilised during World War II when thousands of women workers filled jobs vacated by men on active service.
  For many years, Priddy's Hard was both the Royal Navy's and regional Army's armaments depot and supplier of ordnance and training to Commonwealth and Foreign countries, though its significance decreased over time. In 1971 the 18th-century buildings on the site (including "A" and "B" magazines) were given over to serve as an in-house museum, in which items associated with the depot's history were stored and displayed.
  The site was last used for significant naval activity during the Falklands Conflict in 1982.
caption: View of the New Gunwharf, Priddy's Hard, taken 1992
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