Priddy's Hard is a former military installation in Gosport on the south coast of England, named for the original landowner and the firm beach found there.
The site originated as a 1750s fort, and then became an armaments depot for Royal Navy and British Army weapons, explosives and other stores. The site was decommissioned in 1988, after over two hundred years of operation, with part now being developed for housing and an area retained as a museum.
History Eighteenth century
Priddy's Hard Fort In 1750 by an Act of King George III the Board of Ordnance purchased of agricultural land in Gosport and a boatyard from Jane Priddy and Fareham Vicar, Thomas Missing. This was to construct an earthen rampart as part of an extension of the defences of Portsmouth Harbour and the Royal Dockyard, the Gosport Lines. The ramparts were completed in 1757 and the land enclosed known to as Priddy's Hard Fort; it was manned by the Army. In the nineteenth century Priddy's Hard Fort was armed with 14 eighteen pounder guns.
Proposals for a gunpowder magazine In 1764, after a series of petitions sent to the Master-General of the Ordnance from the general public, the decision was made to remove gunpowder from Old Portsmouth, where it had been stored since the 1580s in the Square Tower. The problem had been raised as early as 1716 in a report to the Master-General by the local Ordnance Storekeeper in Portsmouth:
If the Magazine had exploded the casualties would have been appalling in this densely populated part of Portsmouth. Serious accidents with gunpowder were well known, some of them were recorded as follows:
1649, Tower Street, London — 60 houses demolished after 37 barrels detonated in a shop. 1654, Gravelines — explosion of magazine, 3,000 killed. 1693, Dublin — detonation of 218 barrels, 100 killed. 1739, Brescia — lightning strike, 3,000 killed.
Various proposals were suggested as to where to build the new gunpowder magazine: Priddy's Hard, Boatswain's Hill Coppice (where Defence Munitions Gosport is today), and Horsea Island in the eastern reaches of Portsmouth Harbour. None of the sites were considered ideal, including Priddy's Hard, the main concern being the closeness of the Royal Dockyard, this would eventually lead to its final closure.
Priddy's Hard was chosen due to the availability of the land (already owned by the Crown) and in December 1766 the decision was finally made by the Ordnance Board and the First Lord of the Admiralty.
Establishment of the Ordnance Depot
Construction of the new powder magazine on land within the ramparts commenced in 1771. The Grand Magazine (as it became) was enclosed with a high brick wall to assist with security and to ensure no contraband items were brought into the magazine; these items included ferrous objects (to reduce the risk of sparks), alcohol and smoking materials. It took six years for the complex to be completed.
The site needed to be accessible by boat: new gunpowder would be delivered by barge from the Royal Powder Mills at Faversham and Waltham Abbey and then conveyed to and from ships using small sailing vessels called hoys. It was initially assumed that the gunpowder barrels would be unloaded on the hard (after which the site was named) and thereby conveyed across the foreshore; but when the time came, it was decided to construct a camber basin (in place of the hard) to enable the vessels to unload much closer to the rear of the magazine. However, access to the camber by hoys was a problem from the very beginning: although the camber basin was constructed with a sluice to help prevent silting up, vessels still had difficulty entering it at any other time than high tide. This problem was solved by the construction of a pier (later known as the Old Powder Pier) on the eastern side of the camber basin, the remains of which can be seen at low water.
Barrels of gunpowder were moved between the camber and the magazine by means of what was called the 'rolling way' (the barrels were never rolled individually but placed in trolleys). Within the magazine compound, on either side of the rolling way, a pair of two-storey buildings were erected, one of which served as a shifting house (for examining the powder), the other as a cooperage (though it was soon converted into a second shifting house); later known as the North and South Stores, these buildings were expanded and connected together in the early 19th century to form a single long building which stands parallel with the magazine.
For security, a guardhouse was built at around this time to the north of the magazine, just inside the main entrance through the ramparts. There was also a small barracks block within the northernmost demi-bastion (where "E" Magazine stands today), but neither it nor the guardhouse have survived; (from 1807 nearby Forton Barracks accommodated artillery troops, who manned the fortifications and in 1833 the Dockyard Police Force took over the task of guarding the depot itself).
A large house, the Officers' Residence, was built facing Forton Creek in 1783; surrounded by spacious gardens, it provided accommodation for the three senior officers of the depot: the Storekeeper, the Clerk of the Cheque and the Clerk of the Survey.
The addition of a further two magazines flanking either end and at right angles to the Grand Magazine was cancelled. A possibility for the cancellation may have been the serious fire in the Portsmouth Royal Dockyard in 1776. The resulting lack of storage capacity was highlighted during the Napoleonic Wars and as a consequence led to the use of hulks as floating gunpowder magazines in the reaches of Fareham Lake (beginning with HMS Bulldog in 1801).
By May 1777, the first powder barrels were moved to Priddy's Hard from Portsmouth's Square Tower.
Thenceforward Priddy's Hard operated in tandem with the Board of Ordnance's other main Portsmouth facility, H.M. Gunwharf (not far from the Dockyard on the other side of the harbour), which stored items other than gunpowder (from cannons and gun carriages to small arms and cutlasses). The Board of Ordnance, through these and other depots, provided gunpowder and artillery pieces for both naval and (land-based) military use. Depots (such as Priddy's Hard) which were built near the Royal Dockyards provided powder not only for use on board the ships of the Royal Navy but also for guns on the dockyard fortifications and for use in military campaigns around the globe.
Satellite depots
Almost as soon as the Priddy's Hard magazine had opened, Britain found itself on a war footing. Although six thousand barrels of gunpowder could be stored there, increasing demand meant that Priddy's Hard struggled to provide what was needed. The pressure was somewhat relieved in 1796 by the construction of a magazine across the harbour at Tipner (the choice of location reflected the policy of the Duke of Richmond, Master-General of the Ordnance, to disperse the nation's stores of gunpowder and thus minimise the potential impact of a single depot being attacked).
In 1804 buildings were constructed on Stamshaw Point and Horsea Island for the repair of damp or damaged gunpowder, which could then be returned for storage and re-use.English Heritage National Survey of Ordnance Yards and Magazine Depots, pp10-12 Records exist for the payment of wages of £5 a month "on account of the Royal Powder Works at Little Horsey Island for wages of the cooper, repairing of boats and barges, keep of dogs etc.."
In addition to the magazine at Tipner and the Powder Works at Stamshaw and Little Horsea, a further three magazines were built by the Board of Ordnance at Marchwood in 1814-16. Throughout, Priddy's Hard remained the most important of these sites.
Nineteenth century
In 1804 the rolling way was covered over and additional structures were built alongside it: a foreman's office and a 'shoe room' (where workers were required to change into specialist clothing before entering the magazine). These structures, initially built in timber, were refaced in brick and roofed with slate after the end of the Napoleonic Wars. In 1811 an office building was built to the south of the magazine, with a new cooperage alongside.
By 1846 Priddy's Hard was still under the control of the Board of Ordnance and the following building existed on the site: 'A' Powder Magazine — Built to store 6,222 100 lb barrels. 'B' Magazine (the former North and South Stores, joined since 1812 by a two-storey connecting building). The Inner and Outer Rolling Way to the Magazine, with adjacent office for the Foreman, Shoe-room and Pumphouse. Camber Basin. Two Demi-Bastions. Three Storehouses. Two Fire Engine Houses. Boathouse. Guardhouse (to the north of the Magazine - since demolished). Ferryman Lodge (demolished in 1960s). A ferryman was employed to convey officers and employees across Forton Lake before the bridge was built. Officers' Residence (demolished in 1950s). Houses for Storekeepers, Foreman of Labourers, Cooper & Coxswain. Administration block (with apartments for Established Clerk & Office Keeper).
The Royal Laboratory
In 1804, offshoots of the Royal Laboratory (Woolwich) had been established in Portsmouth and Plymouth, their design overseen by the Comptroller, William Congreve. Forty years later the decision was taken to move the Portsmouth Laboratory (which was mostly concerned with the manufacture of small arms ammunition) from Portsea to the more secure surroundings of Priddy's Hard. This took place in 1847-8, with the design of the new complex closely following that of Congreve's original. It marked the start of what was to be a pronounced change of emphasis at Priddy's Hard: from storage to manufacturing.
Shell manufacture The establishment of the Royal Laboratory at Priddy's Hard coincided with the increased use of artillery shells on land and at sea. By the 1860s, the filling of shells and preparation of fuzes had become the main work of the Royal Laboratory (the manufacture of small arms cartridges having moved in 1859 to a group of buildings to the west, just inside the ramparts). Before long, new purpose-built structures were added to the eastern edge of the site to deal with the manufacture of shells; a tramway linked each of these buildings (and each stage of the process), from 'C' Magazine through the Laboratory complex and on to a new pier (the Shell Pier).
1861 - "C" Powder (60 Tons) Magazine (initially built as a 'receipt & issue' magazine for ships returning to port). 1865 - Case Store (the first of several such buildings grouped around the old 'A' Magazine and designed for storing the wooden boxes in which shells were individually packed). 1866 - Six Shell Filling Rooms (south of the Laboratory - demolished). - "D" Magazine (south of the Laboratory - demolished; built as an 'expense magazine' supplying the shell filling rooms). 1879 - Shell Store, built (adjacent to a new pier) for storage of filled shells prior to despatch by boat.
In 1879 a new magazine was built within the northern bastion; detached from the central area and served by its own pier (the New Powder Pier, 1876), it replaced the 18th-century "A" magazine as the depot's main storage magazine (thereafter "A" magazine was used to store filled shells, rockets and small arms ammunition):
1879 - "E" Powder (500 Tons) Magazine.
In 1883, an explosion in one of the shell filling rooms led to much activity being removed from the central area of the site to the west, beyond the ramparts, where several new buildings were erected alongside Forton Creek, all linked to the main site by tramway:
1886 - Shell Filling Rooms and Fusing Rooms. (demolished ) 1886 - Expense Magazine for the Shell Filling Rooms. 1887 - Unheading Room (where powder barrels from the magazine were opened ready for use in the shell filling rooms); adjacent to the expense magazine.