Description

SX 4454 NE PLYMOUTH MORICE YARD, Devonport
Dockyard
740-1/95/194
The Officer's Terrace (MO63)
1.5.1975 and attached railings, rear
walls and outbuildings

GV II*

Terrace of 5 houses and stables, now houses and offices. 1720-24, laid out by Colonel C Lilly, with Andrew Jelf, Clerk of Works, for the Board of Ordnance. Dunstone rubble with brick party wall stacks and slate roof. Baroque style.
PLAN: double-depth plan with end stables and rear service blocks. EXTERIOR: 3 storey, attic and basement; 21-bay range. A strongly articulated symmetrical terrace with coped parapet. Lower 2 storey central former Commissioner's House is double fronted with a parapet and a small central pediment containing a lunette, steps across the basement area to a round-arched doorway with half-glazed door and plate-glass fanlight, and wide outer segmental-arched tripartite windows with central 8/8-pane sashes, some thick glazing bars. Flanking pairs of houses set forward with clasping pilasters and a parapet, raised to the centre with a round-arched attic window, blind to the left-hand end; each with an outer porch with raised clasping pilasters and doorways as the central house, and round-arched side windows, with round-arched ground floor, segmental-arched first- and second-floor windows, most with 4/4-pane C19 sashes; outer bays have projected ground floor with round-arched doorway and half-glazed door and segmental-arched first-floor window, that at the right-hand end 2 storeys with a second-floor Venetian window. Single-storey screen walls with a recessed flat-headed bay containing a round-arched doorway and half-glazed door give onto a courtyard, and connect the end former stables, facing sideways with 5-window return elevations with central doorways with timber surrounds and a cornice.
INTERIOR: central house has a rear lateral passage, rear transverse dogleg stair with uncut string and heavy stick balusters, and panelling with heavy rails with bolection mouldings and
wainscot fields; upper floor partly open to king post roof has timber cyma cornices. Joinery includes corner cupboards, fielded shutters and 2-panel doors.
SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: attached mid C20 basement area railings extend the full length of the terrace, turning in to the entrances of each house. Attached rear rubble garden walls extend
back to the Yard wall (qv). To N of garden is C18 rubble wall and slated outbuildings extending back to the Morice Gate ( qv).
HISTORY: the Terrace for the Yard Officers was part of Lilly's formal plan for the Yard, on the upper part above the excavated lower gun wharf, and using stone quarried on site. An idiosyncratic example of the style associated with Hawksmoor and the Board of Ordnance at
this time, at for example the Woolwich Arsenal and Berwick-on- Tweed barracks. The unusually robust internal joinery suggests the work of a naval rather than house carpenter. The terrace is also a notably early and strongly articulated example of a palace front composition, and part of a fine series of Officers' terraces in the Royal Dockyards.
(Sources: Coad J: Historic Architecture of the Royal Navy: London: 1983: 141; The Buildings of England: Pevsner N: Devon: London: 1989: 652-3; Coad J: The Royal Dockyards 1690-1850: Aldershot: 1989: 249-252; Barker N: English Architecture Public and Private: London: 1993: 211).

Listing NGR: SX4491254833

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q17554400

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

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