The Dockyard story – Quadrangular Storehouse
The Sheerness Dockyard Preservation Trust have released a short film highlighting the tragic 1979 demolition of Sheerness Naval Dockyard’s magnificent late Georgian Quadrangular Storehouse.
The Quadrangular Store, the finest building in Sheerness Dockyard, was demolished over several months in 1979. Designed by Edward Holl, architect to the Navy Board, and built between 1824 and 1829, this huge building, used to house everything the Navy needed to maintain and provision its ships, was built on four sides surrounding a covered quadrangle.
Built over 6 floors, the Store covered an area of 1.65 acres and measured 331 feet/101 metres long by 216 feet/66 metres wide. The Navy, always keen to innovate with building materials, exploited the advantages of cast iron to construct the Store with a vast internal structural framework of pre-fabricated cast iron clad externally in brickwork. As such, the Store was a very early example of an iron framed building.
The film includes interviews with 4 former employees of the Dockyard and a selection of images taken in 1978 by the Department of the Environment to record the building prior to its demolition.
Built over 6 floors, the Store covered an area of 1.65 acres and measured 331 feet/101 metres long by 216 feet/66 metres wide.
Far larger and more impressive than the early 19th century warehouses at the docks in London, the importance of the Quadrangular Store, like the contemporary warehouses in the capital, was not recognised in the 1970s and its demolition was sanctioned following a public enquiry. Had it survived a little longer, the Quadrangular Store would surely have been upgraded to a grade 1 listed building and therefore recognised as a building of national importance.
