Building MPM799 - PORTERS LODGE (BUILDING NUMBER 1/7)

Dockyard porter's lodge, now police office, c1708 with later alterations, Stuccoed brick; hipped slate roof with brick stacks, part stuccoed. EXTERIOR: 2 storeys with cellar and attic. 4 x 2,6 bays. Tall narrow windows with replacement 8-pane sashes; flat-roofed dormers with 6-pane sashes. Mid C20 part-glazed doors. Eaves cornice below parapet. North elevation: on ground floor 2 windows at centre flanked by doors; 4 windows above. West elevation: 2 bays on left recessed and blind, with small single-storey mid C20 addition. Right-hand section has ground floor screened by single-storey mid C20 shelter with pitched, glazed roof. On 1st floor the 3rd window is blind. 3 dormers with tall brick fire wall on left. INTERIOR: cellar has old wooden partitions, cupboards with strap-hinged doors, shelves with ogee-moulded fronts; wine rack; shot rack and chests; chamfered beams and joists; stone flag floor. On ground floor some original panelling and plain cornice in one room; in stair hall, an archway with imposts and keystone, a doorway with moulded architrave, and a plain cornice. Panelled full-height stair well, the stair itself with most original features replaced apart from closed string and, between 1st floor and attic, the original turned balusters, square newels and moulded handrail. On 1st floor, door and window architraves have attached columns and roundels in corners; some panelling. This is the oldest surviving building in the Dockyard. The porters who occupied it used to be in charge of the watchmen. Part of a group with the Victory Gate (qv). (Sources: The Buildings of England: Lloyd D: Hampshire and the Isle of Wight: Harmondsworth: 1985: 409). [1] The roof and chimney stacks were refurbished in 1994-95, and a single storey ground floor extension was removed to reinstate the buildings original plan. The lodge has walls of stuccoed brick, a hipped slate roof, and a limestone and brick basement. It has been suggested that the basement may belong to an earlier Porter's Lodge building on the site. Since the 1980s the building has been used as offices for the Portsmouth Naval Base Property Trust. [2]