[3] In 1650, victualling facilities were established alongside the dockyard; these played a key role in the provisioning of westbound vessels setting off from England and Ireland to the colonies.

[6] Then, in 1694, the English Parliament established Kinsale as the headquarters for co-ordinating convoy operations in the Western Approaches (for protecting merchant shipping from attacks by privateers).

[10] The yard was small compared to the larger Royal Navy Dockyards in England; yet at the height of its activity, in the 1720s, the complex supported a not insubstantial body of labourers, including sixty joiners, forty shipwrights and an assortment of coopers, caulkers, maltsters and smiths.

[11] A survey of the dockyard undertaken by Sir Charles Vallancey in 1777 describes storehouses arranged around three sides of a quadrangle fronting on to the river, an open courtyard containing a mast pond and other buildings (including offices, a sail loft, paint shop and nail store) all enclosed within a perimeter wall, and an area with a boathouse and slipway; however, Vallancey also reported that, while 'Kinsale was suitable in former years it could not [now] cater for our ships of war which draw more water than formerly'.

It was only after 1803, when the Agent Victualler suggested instead developing Haulbowline (a nearby uninhabited island in Cork Harbour) that Kinsale Dockyard was fully run down, a process that was completed by 1812.