Enfilade

The former home for injured seamen established
at Greenwich by Queen Mary

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From English Heritage:

Jonathan Coad, Support for the Fleet: Architecture and Engineering of the Royal Navy’s Bases, 1700–1914 (Swindon: English Heritage, 2013), 464 pages, ISBN: 978-1848020559, £100.

Joint winner of the Association for Industrial Archaeology’s Peter Neaverson Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Industrial Archaeology (2014)

This major new book traces for the first time the architectural and engineering works in the Royal Navy’s shore bases at home and overseas and the political imperatives and technologies that helped shape them up to the First World War. Based on detailed archival research, it concentrates on the remarkable legacy of surviving structures. The varied requirements of the sailing navy and its steam-driven successor are reflected in successive dockyard remodellings and expansions. The book reveals the close links that developed with a rapidly industrialising Britain at the end of the eighteenth century, showing contributions of figures such as Samuel Bentham, Thomas Telford, Henry Maudslay, the Rennies, the Jessops and James Watt.

The influence of the Royal Engineers is traced from early beginnings in the 1700s to their major role in the dockyard expansions from the late 1830s into the twentieth century. The architectural development of victualling and ordnance yards, naval hospitals, schools and coaling stations are all described, together with their key contributions to Great Britain’s long naval supremacy. Copiously illustrated with maps, plans and photographs, this important and lively work will appeal to naval historians, industrial archaeologists and students of British history.

Jonathan Coad is a former Inspector of Ancient Monuments. He is a Vice-President of the Society for Nautical Research and a former President of the Royal Archaeological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland.

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C O N T E N T S

1. The Royal Dockyards in Great Britain, 1700–1835
2. The Royal Dockyards in Great Britain, 1835–1914
3. Planning and Building the Royal Dockyards to 1795
4. Planning and Building the Royal Dockyards, 1795–1914
5. Engineering Works of the Sailing Navy, 1700–1835
6. Buildings of the Sailing Navy
7. Dockyard Housing, Offices and Chapels
8. Buildings and Engineering Works of the Steam Navy, 1835–1914
9. Growth of Empire: The Overseas Bases of the Sailing Navy, 1700–1835
10. Heyday of Empire: The Overseas Bases, 1835–1914
11. The Mediterranean Bases: Buildings and Engineering Works, 1700–1914
12. The West Indies and North American Bases: Buildings and Engineering Works, 1700–1914
13. South Atlantic and Australian Bases: Buildings and Engineering Works, 1700–1914
14. Feeding the Fleet: The Royal Victualling Yards
15. Naval Ordnance Yards
16. Care of the Sick and Wounded: Naval Hospitals
17. Barracks and Training Establishments