Purfleet Gunpowder Storage Depot (EHER 5000)

The surviving buildings, structures and security walls of a former Board of Ordnance Gunpowder Storage Depot, established in the 1760's. The depot was established between the 1763 and 1765 and comprised five massive gunpowder magazines, stores and workshops for barrel making, cranes and wharves for loading and unloading barges, a proof range for powder testing, barracks for a small garrison, a HQ building and accommodation for the stores staff and labourers. All destroyed save one magazine.

Original HER entry merged with NRHE data import. Purfleet barracks-clock tower, landing stage, sergeant's house, powder magazines (all destroyed save one). <1> No 5 magazine is listed, brick. It was removed to Purfleet from Greenwich from 1760 onwards. Dated around 1800. <2> Various 18th and 19th century items have been found-a large number of military buttons dating from 1770-World War II, badges, buckles, a large copper gunpowder scoop in fine condition. <7> <8> Many photos are in the SMR including aerial photographs, many of No 5 magazine, others show the other magazines, the sergeant's house, the clock tower of around 1800 (also brick). <2>-<6> Drawings in Record Office. <9> Correspondence and plans in file on proposed uses, restoration, demolition of the above buildings, including the Ordnance House (demolished?). <10> Newspaper article on proposed demolition of No 5 magazine in this file also. <11> On the north bank of the River Thames at the upper end of Long Reach, at Purfleet in Essex, there is a substantial brick building of the 1760s. It is, in fact, virtually all that remains of Purfleet Gunpowder Magazine, an ordnance depot that was pivotal to British military supply in the later Georgian and Victorian periods. In November 1754 the Board decided to increase its stock of gunpowder in connection with plans to retake North American territory lost to the French. Whether linked to this or not it was in December 1754 that "Plans and Profiles" for a magazine at Purfleet to contain 17,460 barrels were presented. The magazine was to form the core of a garrisoned establishment including ancillary buildings and barracks for 100 men and their officers. An Act of Parliament was passed in April 1760 permitting the Board of Ordnance to replace the Greenwich Magazine by buying and developing the land at Purfleet. Construction started in 1761 and continued on a large scale through to 1769, and more perfunctorily on to 1773. However, gunpowder was being stored from late 1763 when two magazines were complete, and the other magazines appear to have been up by 1765. The five magazine buildings as completed had a capacity of 52,000 barrels, each magazine could hold 10,400 barrels (460 tons) of gunpowder. To put this into dual perspectives, the Tilbury magazines each held 3,000 barrels. The construction of the powder magazines required demolition of several existing buildings and the levelling of a broad strip of land adjacent to the river; some ground may have been made up, and both the Thames bank and the Mar Dyke were, from 1760, furnished with strong timber revetments. East of and parallel to the magazine site is a prominent scarp, in excess of four metres in height, possibly an old chalk quarry edge which was straightened and landscaped during construction of the depot. The principal survival, No.5 Powder Magazine was the southernmost of the group of five large gunpowder magazines. No.5 Magazine measures 151ft by 52ft 6in. and is 16ft tall to the eaves. It has brown-brick walls laid to Flemish bond with struck joints and tooled Portland stone dressings. It has a vast shallow-pitched slate roof. The 5ft 3in.-thick walls are made up of a double skin of brick, to maintain an even temperature inside the building. Internally the building remains largely as built. It is divided as two long brick barrel-vaulted aisles, each l9ft wide and l7ft from floor to head of vault. At the east and west ends groined cross vaults link the aisles. The aisles are separated down the centre of the building by a 4ft-thick brick wall within which there are nine round-headed openings presumably to facilitate circulation between the magazines. The aisles were sub-divided into storage compartments, known as bins or lots. There were originally 48 bins; these are numbered on the tie beams. When full each bin would have contained 200 barrels. A notably early system of mobile overhead cranage survives in No.5 Magazine. At what was the south-eastern entrance through the inner security wall into the garden is the clock and bell tower, apparently built in 1767-8. Other early buildings do not survive. Purfleet Powder Magazine continued to expand and develop well into the 20th century, though the heart of the depot remained very little altered. The establishment closed in 1962 and four of the five 1760s magazines were amongst buildings cleared soon after 1973. Most of the site has since been redeveloped for housing. The original proof house is now used as the Purfleet Day Centre. <12> Other ref - RCHME Survey Report <13> (This contains more detailed information than <12>) Much of the site was demolished in the 1970's when the present housing estate was built. The surviving remains investigated by the RCHME comprise one magazine (no. 5), another building used as a copper hoop store in the 19th century, parts of the security walls including a fine clock tower, a blast mound and several boundary markers. Some of the workers' housing may also survive but was not investigated. <13> Site Assessment = No 5 Magazine is perhaps the finest surviving example in the country of this period. <10> Sept 2012: The surviving gunpowder magazine is a scheduled monument reference No. 1005561 (also known as TK151). Surveyed onto an OS Super plan digital map plot at 1:1250. Additional references <14> - <19>