Royal Clarence Yard in Gosport, Hampshire, England was established in 1828 as one of the Royal Navy's two principal, purpose-built, provincial victualling establishments (the other being Royal William Yard in Plymouth, Devon), both of which worked in tandem with the central victualling establishment in Deptford. It was designed by George Ledwell Taylor, Civil Architect to the Navy Board and named after the then Duke of Clarence (later William IV, King of England). A naval brewing establishment had previously operated on the site (at Weevil, to the north of Gosport on the west shore of Portsmouth Harbour), which the Victualling Commissioners purchased in the mid-18th century.
Queen Victoria regularly used the Royal Clarence Yard as her disembarkation point for the short journey across the Solent to her house at Osborne in the Isle of Wight, travelling from Gosport Station on the single track line extension which had been opened in 1844 principally for this purpose.
By the 20th century, the yard had expanded to cover of land. Between the establishment of the Yard and its eventual decommissioning in the early 1990s, Royal Clarence Yard supplied provisions to the Royal Navy in all the major conflicts of this period.
In 1995, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) declared just over of the Royal Clarence Yard to be surplus to requirements, and released it to Gosport Borough Council. Berkeley Homes bid for the land in 1998 and was granted planning permission for a mixed use development in 2001. The south-eastern part of the Yard (of just over ), which includes the Oil and Pipelines Agency access to the Gosport Oil Fuel Depot, was retained by the MoD for operational reasons. In 2014, the Defence Infrastructure Organisation announced plans to release most of the rest of the retained land at Royal Clarence Yard to Gosport Borough Council.
History of the victualling yard Records dating from the early 17th century show the area being named "Weevel Wel Spring". Later records indicate that the land had once been a farm belonging to someone named "Weovill".
Player's brewery
In 1685 a local brewer, "Captain" Henry Player, inherited a parcel of waterfront land at Weevil; he founded a brewery on the site and started supplying beer to the Royal Navy. In 1704, he built a three-storey manor house on the same estate, topped with a cupola; known as Weevil House, it was set within formal gardens alongside an orchard.
Player's house stood, surrounded by gardens, at the west end of what is now Flagstaff Green; his 'Great Brewhouse' stood to the east within its own compound, which had a wharf to the waterfront. South of the brewhouse were a cooperage and a beer store (facing each other across a small courtyard); to the north of the brewhouse was a T-plan building consisting of a malt house attached to a storehouse. Water for the brewing process was drawn by means of a windpump from a well in the cooperage courtyard. There were also a number of ancillary buildings on the site and houses for the Master Brewer and the cooper.
Purchase of the brewery and the Weevil estate
Henry Player died in 1711 but the brewery continued to be managed by members of his family until 1751. In that year, the brewery was purchased by the Victualling Commissioners with a view to consolidating their brewing operations in Portsmouth on a single site. The complex was soon extended: the start of the Seven Years' War prompted the Commissioners to build an additional brewhouse in 1756 to meet increased demand (it was built in place of the malt house, since malting no longer took place on the site); the adjoining storehouse was also extended to the north. Close by, a square reservoir was built to supply the new brewhouse with water; it also provided water for other uses around the yard.
Henry Player's daughter, who had continued to live in Weevil House, died in 1758. The house (together with its gardens and the rest of the Weevil estate) was then purchased by the Commissioners (but no new buyer could be found for the house itself, and it was demolished in 1772). The purchase allowed the brewery to expand; and thus in 1766 a much larger cooperage was built by the Commissioners, made up of four ranges of buildings in an irregular quadrangle (these are still in place, and are the oldest surviving buildings in any of the victualling yards).
Wyatt's rebuilding In 1780, the decision was taken to replace Player's original 'Great Brewhouse' with a new brewery, to be built alongside the east range of the new cooperage. Construction duly took place in 1781–2 to designs by Samuel Wyatt, with Samuel Whitbread acting as a consultant on improving the brewing process. Wyatt's plans included a pair of long waterfront storehouses for storing beer (in barrels) together with the dry goods used in the brewing process (though in fact only one of the two, the North Store, was completed at this time). The South Store would have been built immediately to the east of the new brewery (the two buildings being connected by a malt mill at the northern end); the North Store was built directly to the east of the 1756 brewhouse and storehouse.
Problems with the water supply to the brewery had led to John Smeaton being brought in to advise on this and other engineering works across the Yard. In 1780 a new pumphouse was built to his design, above a well to the north-west of Wyatt's new brewery (i.e. just north of what is now Flagstaff Green); the pump was driven by a horse engine and was connected to the nearby reservoir (it remained in use until the mid-19th century and was then demolished). In 1788 a further pumphouse was built, to the same design, above another well immediately to the south of Wyatt's brewery; (converted from horse power to steam in 1860, it remained in service for many years afterwards; the building was eventually demolished in the 1970s).
Consolidating Portsmouth's victualling establishments
The challenge of victualling the fleet during the Napoleonic Wars led the Victualling Board to try to consolidate its various manufacturing, storage and distribution operations in Portsmouth on to a single site (as had already been achieved at the Board's principal Yard in Deptford). At the time, it was operating from various premises, mostly in and around Old Portsmouth; these included King's Mill by the Gunwharf (purchased in 1712), a slaughterhouse near the Square Tower, and a bakery and storehouse (established in 1513) on King's Street. All were on constrained sites with limited access.
In 1824 the Victualling Board proposed transferring all these operations to the Weevil site; (they had made a similar recommendation two years earlier in respect of victualling arrangements at Plymouth, which had led to a site being adopted and adapted for the future Royal William Yard in Stonehouse). With regard to Gosport, however, the Admiralty initially resisted the idea; that it went ahead was largely thanks to its being championed by the Duke of Clarence (Lord High Admiral at the time).
Taylor's rebuilding
By 1828, George Ledwell Taylor was engaged as an architect; he was already involved in modernising Wyatt's brewery, which (along with the adjacent cooperage) was to remain in place and in use as part of the new complex. Wyatt's storehouses were also retained: the North Store would form the south wing of Taylor's new Granary, Storehouse and Bakery complex, while the unfinished South Store was completed and expanded to form a 'New South Store' (which in the 1830s was given over to rum, tea, wine, tobacco and cocoa). At the same time, directly east of the New South Store, land was reclaimed from Portsmouth Harbour to create a sizeable new wharf, on which a timber 'slaughter-house, vegetable store and weighing room' were built, the ground being paved to form a cattle yard.
The most prominent new building in the victualling yard was a combined storehouse, granary, flour mill and bakery, built directly to the north of Wyatt's brewery and storehouse. It consisted of two extended wings built either side of a central four-storey Granary (which projected out on to the edge of the quayside). The two wings functioned as large storehouses, except for the ground floor of the north wing which housed an industrial bakery; the bakery contained state-of-the-art machinery designed by pioneering food technologist Sir Thomas Grant. Although it could produce fresh bread for local consumption, the principal product of the bakery was ship's biscuits; there was space set aside in the building for up to twenty thousand bags () of biscuit to be stored. The storehouses also held stocks of flour, oatmeal, raisins, peas and soap, as well as books and clothing for seamen and marines. Behind the south wing a large Salt Meat Store was built, where salted meat was stored in barrels ready to be loaded on to ships. It was made up of six 'vast rooms', containing stocks of beef, pork, suet, vinegar and salt.
The north wing extended behind the Granary to accommodate the flour mill (where grain from the Granary was ground into flour for the bakery); this was powered by a Boulton and Watt steam engine, located to the rear (the engine and the milling machinery were provided by Sir John Rennie). The engine also served to pump water from a newly-sunk well, which was deep (in contrast to the earlier wells on the site, which extended to depths of between 30 and 42 feet). The fresh water was pumped into a newly built reservoir to the west, from where it could be piped to the quay and transferred by boat to the ships.
Apart from the brewing, baking and butchering complexes, Taylor built a number of residential and administrative buildings around a large open space (which is now known as Flagstaff Green) just inside the new Main Gate (where Weevil House had once stood). The gate itself was in the form of a triumphal arch, topped on both sides with a sculptural representation of the royal arms. The residences included a pair of large detached dwellings for the two most senior resident officers of the yard. Facing the main gate across Flagstaff Green was the yard's principal office building, which was topped by a small clock-tower.
North Meadow expansion Earlier, in 1802–3, a set of workshops and a small barracks had been built (to the north, outside the Weevil estate) for the Royal Military Artificers, who were responsible for maintaining the nearby fortifications. The Artificers, later renamed the Royal Sappers and Miners, remained here until 1829, whereupon the buildings and surrounding land were given over to the Admiralty to become part of the new victualling yard. The workshops subsequently functioned as maintenance sheds for the victualling yard and the barracks block served as the yard's police station. The open area known as the North Meadow, lying between the workshops and the mill/granary, later came to be used as a lairage for livestock.
Renaming and reopening On 1 July 1831 the complex was renamed the Royal Clarence Victualling Yard. By the end of 1832 work on the new Yard was all but complete. The Yard remained in service for the next 160 years; several of its buildings have survived to the present day (as listed below).
Later history 19th century
Wyatt's brewery remained operational well into the 19th century: in 1831 the daily shipboard issue of beer ended (to be replaced by the rum ration), but brewing still continued, albeit on a much smaller scale, until the 1850s (providing beer for the local naval hospital and Royal Marine infirmary). The brewery building also functioned as the beer store, the adjacent South Storehouse having now become a rum and sugar store. In 1860, after on-site brewing had ceased, the brewery building was converted into a clothing (or 'slop') store, though two large vats were retained and used for rum. At the same time,