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Bold, Weil-Defined Masses: Sir John Rennie and the Royal William Yard

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2016

Chris Miele
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Extract

In summer 1823 John Rennie wrote to the Navy Victualling Board about the new depot he was planning for them at Plymouth. The future Royal William Yard would, as he put it, be ‘capable of embracing every requisite purpose’. The new facility would not just comprise thousands of square feet of stores. There would also be buildings for brewing beer, milling grain, and baking biscuit, a slaughterhouse and a cooperage for making casks to store the prodigious output (Figs 1, 2 and 3).

Type
Research Article
Information
Architectural History , Volume 49 , 2006 , pp. 149 - 178
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 2006

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References

Notes

1 Rennie Papers, Institute of Civil Engineers, London, Rennie to Victualling Board, 12 July 1823; Keystone, 1, p. 1.

2 Coad, Jonathan, The Royal Dockyards, 1690–1850 (Aldershot, Hampshire, 1989), pp. 126–27 Google Scholar. See Coad, Royal Dockyards, pp. 1–3, 12, 17-26 for an overview of dockyard expansion after 1750.

3 Ibid., p. 290.

4 Admiralty Papers, ADM 111 266; Keystone, 1, p. 2.

5 Keystone, 1, pp. 8–9, 12, 24–25.

6 PRO, Admiralty Papers, 1: 5893 and 5940; Keystone, 1, p. 22.

7 PRO, Admiralty Papers, 1: 5705; Keystone, I, p. 12.

8 Keystone, 1, pp. 1–10, and passim.

9 Coad, , Royal Dockyards, p. 271.Google Scholar

10 Ibid., p. 273.

11 Ibid., p. 283.

12 Stephens, L. M. W., History of the Victualling Department and Its Association with Plymouth (no date, privately printed), copy available at the Plymouth and West Devon Record Office (catalogued under author’s surname)Google Scholar.

13 The best assessment of these fortifications, which span from the sixteenth to twentieth centuries, is Saunders’, Andrew ‘The Fortifications of Western King’, appendix to Wessex Archaeology’s chapter in the Stonehouse Urban Development Area, Plymouth, Devon. Environmental Assessment: The Archaeological and Built Heritage (Exeter, 1995).Google Scholar

14 The Royal Naval Hospital on Stonehouse High Street opened in 1762 and the Royal Marine Barracks on Durnford Street, nearer still to the Royal William Yard site, opened in 1785.

15 Coad, Royal Dockyards, p. 276.

16 Ibid., p. 283.

17 Evans, D., ‘The Royal Clarence Yard, in Part I’ (unpublished report for Berkeley Homes, June 2000), pp. 12–13 Google Scholar. See also PRO, Admiralty Papers, 1: 3787.

18 PRO, MPHH 239, July 1823, and MPH 681, 11 August 1824. See also WORKS 41/0116, 0117, 0118, 0122, 0129, and 0130.

19 PRO, WORKS 41/0131 for various sections through foundations, and WORKS 41/0121. See also ‘Structural Notes on Brewhouse and Clarence Buildings, Royal William Yard, Plymouth’, prepared by Alan Baxter & Associates for Urban Splash (March 2002).

20 Rennie Papers, Rennie to General Stapleton, 23 January 1828.

21 Coad, Royal Dockyards, p. 283. See also Rennie Papers, 30 December 1830.

22 Ibid., p. 36.

23 Rennie Papers, Letter. 23 July 1824.

24 Coad, Royal Dockyards, pp. 29–35, 126–27.

25 McIntosh (sometimes ‘Mackintosh’) is named in construction documents and letters. Rennie credits him specifically in his account of the Yard that he included in The Theory, Formation and Construction of British and Foreign Harbours (London, 1854), p. 177.

26 Rennie Papers, Letters, 10 December 1824 and 13 December 1836.

27 In Rennie Papers see 10 June 1824, ‘Sea Wall Specification’, and letters dated 8 and 24 November 1826, and 15 May 1827.

28 Drawings at PRO, WORKS 41/3, dated 3 September 1824.

29 Rennie Papers, Letter, 23 July 1823.

30 WORKS 41/9 and 10, dated 9 February and April 1833 respectively. See also Rennie Papers, 7 November 1831.

31 PRO, MPH 681, 11 August 1824; also English Heritage Plans, NMR Swindon, WORKS 41/0114, 21 May 1826, and 41/0124.

32 Many of Rennie’s own specification drawings for these feature survive in the PRO, WORKS 41 class, for example, 41/084 and 089.

33 PRO, WORKS 41/087, and site inspection. The structure appears largely as built.

34 Rennie, Theory, p. 84.

35 I am indebted to Robert Thorne for allowing me to inspect his report, “The Iron Roofs at the Royal William Yard’, prepared on behalf of consulting engineers Alan Baxter & Associates (unpublished report, April 1994) (ABA no. 946 / 24). A copy can be found in the collection of reports held by SWERDA in their site archive, and one is also reproduced in Keystone’s report.

36 See Thorne, ‘Iron Roofs’, and PRO, WORKS 41/16 and 17 (Melville), 41/29, 39 and 40 (Cooperage), and English Heritage, NMR, Swindon, WORKS 41/0103 (Melville), 41/0108 and 0109 (Clarence).

37 Rennie Papers, 13 July 1823, 16 November 1829 and 30 December 1830. The cost was £23,575 as against £24,134. The initial estimate allowed for a basement, which was not built, but then by deepening the plan Rennie increased the area of usable warehouse by some 20%.

38 PRO, WORKS 41/4, 5 and 6. Rennie’s specification, in the Rennie Papers, is dated 14 October 1827.

39 Coad, Royal Dockyards, pp. 122, 126–27. There is a very similarly planned building at Sheerness, designed by Edward Holl in 1822, and almost certainly known to the younger Rennie who was in his father’s office when he was advising on the rebuilding of that yard.

40 Melville is perhaps the best documented of the structures in the Yard, with numerous surviving drawings. See PRO, WORKS 41/12–23, 1829–31, and English Heritage, NMR, Swindon, WORKS 41/096–0105, 1830–31.

41 Rennie Papers, 30 December 1831. The original, undated specification (Keystone surmised 1829) also survives.

42 Rennie recommended the noted tower clock maker Vulliamy of Pall Mall in December 1830, who priced the item at £525. It was still not installed by June 1832, according to correspondence in the Institute of Civil Engineers.

43 A slightly pinkish limestone ashlar was used for the courtyard, without any granite dressings.

44 Coad, Royal Dockyards, pp. 45–46.

45 Rennie Papers, 23 July 1823 and 30 December 1831.

46 Rennie’s design calculations survive in the National Library of Scotland, MS 19952. See also, Stephens, , History of the Victualling Department, p. 42.Google Scholar

47 Keystone’s analysis of this building, based on physical evidence and documentary sources, remains the most complete. See I, pp. 61–69.

48 PRO, ADM 174/415. See also PRO, WORKS 41/42–44. Contract drawings are found at PRO, WORKS 41/45–59.

49 Rennie Papers, 4 January 1828.

50 National Library of Scotland, MS 19952.

51 Rennie Papers, 30 December 1831.

52 This drawing is at PRO, WORKS 41 /48. See also WORKS 41/48–50.

53 Cooperage is also one of the best documented buildings in the Yard, with dozens of surviving contract drawings for everything from elevations to coopers’ fitments. See PRO, WORKS 41/29–41, and English Heritage, NMR, Swindon, WORKS 41/083–095.

54 Rennie Papers, Letters, 12 April 1832 and 4 April 1833. The latter states that Rennie had asked Chantrey to explain why the increase in size of the statue by one-third led to a cost overrun.

55 Coad, Royal Dockyards, p. 276.

56 Ibid., pp. 49–50.

57 I am indebted to Andrew Saint, Editor of the Survey of London (English Heritage) for allowing me to read his draft entry on the Rennies for the new Dictionary of National Biography, which has formed the basis of this brief biographical sketch. The most detailed study of the elder Rennie remains Smiles’, Samuel Lives of the Engineers, II (London, 1862), pp. 218–459.Google Scholar

58 Ibid., II, pp. 389–409.

59 Ibid., II, p. 388.

60 Ibid., II, pp. 396–97.

61 Skempton, A. W. and Wright, E. C., ‘Early Members of the Smeatonian Society of Civil Engineers’, Transactions of the Newcomen Society, 44 (1971-72), p. 36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

62 Smiles, , Lives, 11, pp. 309–10.Google Scholar

63 Boucher, C. T. G., John Rennie 1761–1821. The Life and Work of a Great Engineer (Manchester, 1963), pp. 97–109, passim.Google Scholar

64 Ibid., p. 119.

65 Rennie, John, Autobiography of Sir John Rennie (London, 1875), pp. 4–5.Google Scholar

66 Ibid., p. 36.

67 Ibid., p. 50.

68 Ibid., pp. 150–51.

69 Ibid., p. 157.

70 Ibid., p. 157.