Mount Wise, Plymouth

He much beautified his principal seat of Sydenham House, and added such height and such a great amount of granite to it that his contemporary Risdon (d.1640) remarked: "the very foundation is ready to reel under the burthen".

The son of the latter was Edward Wise (1632-1675) of Sydenham, thrice MP for Okehampton, who in 1667 sold the manor of Stoke Damerell for £11,600[18] to Sir William Morice (1602-1676).

Sir William Morice (1602-1676) of Werrington in Devon, was Secretary of State for the Northern Department and a Lord of the Treasury from June 1660 to September 1668.

A large number of soldiers was required to man the defences; to house them, a series of square barracks was built around the perimeter in the late 1750s and early '60s.

An octagonal redoubt with stone walls was built on Mount Wise in the 1770s, forming an emplacement designed to house guns for the purpose of defending the Royal Dockyard.

[3] In 1804 an offshoot of the Royal Laboratory was set up on Mount Wise, just west of the redoubt, in buildings designed by Lewis Wyatt.

The Royal Laboratory (established in Woolwich in the 17th century) was a department of the Board of Ordnance responsible for the manufacture and repair of small-arms ammunition.

Between 1806 and 1814 some 70,000,000 cartridges were produced on Mount Wise and hundreds of men and boys were employed there; by the 1820s, the Napoleonic Wars having ended, the Laboratory had been reduced to a skeleton staff of five.

Mount Wise with 1770s Redoubt now containing a 40 m high mast erected in 1998 with circular viewing platform for recreational visitors, and statue of Winged Victory atop the Scott Memorial (distant right), commemorating the explorer Captain Robert Falcon Scott , Royal Navy , and others who died in March 1912 on their return from the South Pole . Behind the low white wall in the foreground is a series of small swimming pools
Arms of Wise of Sydenham and Mount Wise: Sable, three chevronels ermine
Arms of Morice: Gules, a lion rampant reguardant or
Arms of St Aubyn: Ermine, on a cross sable five bezants
Mount Wise indicated with yellow arrow on an 1851 map of Plymouth. The Royal Dockyard is to the immediate west (left), the whole complex being surrounded on the land side (north and east) by the "Devonport Dock Lines", a defensive wall visible on the map
Mount Wise Fort, Plymouth Dock , by William Hay, 1780.
Government House (later known as Admiralty House ) on Mount Wise: built in 1789–93, it initially served as home and headquarters of the military Governor of Plymouth.
Royal Naval Signal Station (established at Mount Wise in 1810).