page_title: Priddy's Hard
section_title: Present day
hierarchical_section_title: Priddy's Hard / Present day
caption_attribution_description: English: Forton Lake Millennium Bridge Ελληνικά: Forton Λίμνη χιλιετηρίδα Γέφυρα 한국어: 포톤 호수 밀레니엄 브리지 Українська: Фортон озеро міст Міленіум
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 oldest part of the site is now open to the public as the Explosion! Museum of Naval Firepower, which opened in 2001; in 2013 it became a constituent part of the National Museum of the Royal Navy.
  A new Millennium footbridge from Gosport town centre was constructed to aid the redevelopment and access to the area. New housing was built around parts of the original site, including an imitation of the early 19th-century Officers' Residence (demolished in the 1950s) which faces the footbridge. In 2004 an arson attack led to the demolition of the sizeable grade II-listed New Shell Store (being used by the council as a warehouse to store wheelie bins) that stood within the Royal Laboratory quadrangle.
  Outside the historic ramparts, many buildings have been demolished for housing, but a broad area around the ramparts, and north of Forton Lake, were set aside and protected in 1998 as a Site of Importance for Nature Conservation (SINC) in mitigation for planning permission being given for 700 new homes on the site. The SINC includes two moated cordite magazines, which provide a habitat for great crested newts and other protected species of reptile and amphibian. Planning permission was given in 2015 for new houses within the listed traverses of the 1886 shell-filling rooms.
  In 2009 the 23-acre Priddy's Hard site was acquired from Gosport Council by the Portsmouth Naval Base Property Trust, with a view to "developing the site, refurbishing the historic buildings and bringing them into new beneficial use". Since then, some areas have been redeveloped for housing, while others (including the former Royal Laboratory area) remain unoccupied as of 2016. The site as a whole contains some 26 listed buildings. A programme of clearing the historic ramparts of vegetation is now underway (although the use of goats for this purpose was discontinued in 2011 after vandals persistently set fire to their straw bedding).
  In 2016 it was announced that initial support had been given for a £1.9 million grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund as part of the Heritage Enterprise programme (which targets projects creating 'new sustainable economic uses for derelict historic buildings'. The proposed grant would help bring seventeen listed buildings back into use, alongside those occupied by the Explosion museum. Some would be converted for residential use, others for business or community uses, including a waterside pub/restaurant, overnight accommodation for schools in 'C' Magazine, a micro-brewery in 'E' Magazine and the possibility of a new Coastal Forces museum in the former Shell Store. After commercial partners withdrew from the project a new proposal was approved in 2018, to include a residential development of 30 new homes (mostly within the south demi-bastion), restoration of eight listed buildings (and the demolition of another) and various commercial developments.
caption: View across the new bridge to Priddy's Hard
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