page_title: Royal William Victualling Yard
section_title: The buildings
hierarchical_section_title: Royal William Victualling Yard / Description / The buildings
caption_attribution_description: English: Plymouth: Royal William Victualling Yard At Stonehouse. Looking west-south-west with the yard’s dock on the right. The Brewhouse – the building beyond – now contains a cafe on the ground floor. The complex was designed by Sir John Rennie and constructed between 1826 and 1835. The Navy last used the yard in 1992
context_page_description: The Royal William Victualling Yard in Stonehouse, a suburb of Plymouth, England, was the major victualling depot of the Royal Navy and an important adjunct of Devonport Dockyard. It was designed by the architect Sir John Rennie and was named after King William IV. It was built between 1826 and 1835 and occupies a site of approximately 16 acres being half of Western Kings, north of Devil's Point.
  The Yard was released from the Ministry of Defence in 1992 and subsequently passed to the Plymouth Development Corporation. Upon the Corporation's closure in 1999, the Yard was then passed to The South West Regional Development Agency who funded and carried out the extensive c. £60m restoration of the structural fabric of the majority of principal buildings and infrastructure within the yard between 1999 and 2008. During this period the buildings were recategorised from Scheduled Monuments to Grade I/II listed buildings. Private sector development partners Urban Splash were then engaged to carry out the specialist conversion of the site into a mixed-use development.
context_section_description: The Royal William Yard includes a collection of Grade I and Grade II listed buildings, built from Devon limestone with granite detailing, arranged around the square basin; these include (East to West):
  Clarence
  Positioned at the opposite end of the yard to the gatehouse, the Clarence building closes the vista along the main thoroughfare. Begun in 1827 (the first structure to be built on the site), it was originally used as a liquid store with one floor each of spirits, vinegar and beer (use of iron for the roof, doors, windows etc. was to mitigate against the flammability of alcohol). As needs changed, so did the role of the Clarence Store, and latterly the building was used for the storage of spares and components. 
  Clarence is now an award-winning conversion comprising 52 contemporary apartments.
  Brewhouse
  Although purpose built in 1832, it was never actually equipped as a brewhouse since emerging technology was allowing large quantities of fresh water to be carried at sea, eliminating the need for the beer rations. (A shed was later built to store ships water tanks within the Brewhouse courtyard, where they had been stored from as early as 1840.) The building itself stood empty until 1885, when the west wing was converted into a new slaughterhouse, with cattle lairs, a meat store and a vegetable store; at the same time the east wing functioned as a rum store and the central engine house was repurposed to provide hydraulic power to the Yard's many cranes. Later, for much of the 20th century, the Brewhouse housed a torpedo workshop.
  The subject of an award-winning conversion, this building has 78 apartments, together with ground floor commercial space for exhibitions, cafés and restaurants. 
  Cooperage
  Originally a combination of workshops, offices and storage/seasoning space (built around a pair of concentric quadrangles) the cooperage accommodated 100 coopers to make the barrels and kegs in which the produce of the Yard could be stored and transported. In 1869, however, the Navy decided to concentrate the majority of its barrel manufacturing work at Deptford; the coopers' skills were still required at Stonehouse (for repairs and production of smaller items) but their numbers declined over time until only 12 were employed. In 1891 the coopers and other craftsmen based there were transferred to the New Cooperage (q.v.), to make way for the newly established Navy Ordnance Board. The Board transformed the Old Cooperage into a machine shop and ordnance store, and in 1916 the courtyards were roofed over.
  Melville
  Quadrangular storehouse building, designed, built and operated as the nerve centre of the whole of the Royal William Yard; begun in 1829, this was the second building to be constructed on the site. All administration was carried out here and it served as a major storehouse for food, clothing and equipment. As of 2014 it was scheduled to be converted into a hotel. The central cupola contains the yard's original (and still functioning) quarter-chiming clock of 1831 by Benjamin Lewis Vulliamy.
  New Cooperage
  Sixty years after the Yard was completed, the New Cooperage was built to house the coopers and others tradesmen displaced by the Naval Ordnance Board and its workshops. Here there was room for painters, wheelwrighters and a host of other skilled men needed to keep the Royal Navy in perfect trim. Its final use was a survival pack ration and equipment store.
  Mills and Bakery
  The northern range of this complex of buildings contained a central granary flanked by flour mills, with 27 sets of millstones powered by a pair of steam engines, capable of producing 270,000 lb (120,000 kg) of flour per week. Grain could be loaded directly into the granary from vessels on the quayside. The southern range contained the bakery, with two sets of six ovens, back-to-back either side of the central spine wall (beneath a row of four square chimneys). There was a central boiler house with a chimney, with one engine to the north and the other to the south (the engines also powered biscuit-making equipment). The biscuits were dried on the 
caption: Looking towards Clarence with the Cooperage on the left and Brewhouse on the right. Finely-engineered stonework is seen throughout the Yard
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