User:DavidAnstiss/Ropery

HISTORY: The importance of Plymouth as a base for English fleets in the Western Approaches was recognised in the late C17, and the construction of a dockyard was instigated by William III. A ropeyard was laid out in the 1690s, on an east-west axis along the southern side of the dockyard. The various stages involved in rope production required a number of separate buildings with different functions, and the ropeyard or ropery was thus designed to facilitate efficient production and formed a distinct part of the dockyard. The processes of spinning hemp into twine and the laying of rope took place in separate spinning and laying houses (the most distinctive parts of the ropery) at Devonport.

During the remodelling of the dockyard in the mid-C18, new ropeyard buildings, including twin spinning and laying houses, were erected on the eastern boundary of the enlarged dockyard. After the spinning house was gutted by fire in 1812 plans were drawn up by Edward Holl, the Navy Board architect, to 'restore' the ropery, using cast and wrought iron in place of timber, with stone flagged floors. The new spinning house, which was re-named the East Ropery in 1815, appears to have been largely completed by late 1817, at which time it was considered one of the largest fireproof buildings in the country. Rope production continued until 1941. During World War II, as a result of bomb damage, the laying house was reduced to only its foundations and the spinning house to the east was shortened by almost a third at its northern end. Between 1945 and 1969 the Spinning House served as a training centre for shipwright apprentices; it is now used partly for storage, though much of the building is unoccupied.

http://www.britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/en-476411-east-ropery-formerly-spinning-house-s-13

spinning house in devonport and chatham

more notes http://eprints.port.ac.uk/3902/1/The_Restoration_of_Portsmouth_Dockyard_Blcok_Mills.pdf