Royal Clarence Yard
It was designed by George Ledwell Taylor, Civil Architect to the Navy Board[1] and named after the then Duke of Clarence (later William IV, King of England).
The new victualling yard was developed on approximately 20 hectares of land,[2] some of which was already in use as a brewing establishment at Weevil[3] on the west shore of Portsmouth Harbour, to the north of Gosport.
Queen Victoria regularly used Royal Clarence Yard as her disembarkation point for the short journey across the Solent to her house at Osborne in the Isle of Wight, travelling from Gosport Station on the single track line extension which had been opened in 1844 principally for this purpose.
[3] In 1995, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) declared 16.26 hectares of Royal Clarence Yard surplus to requirements and released it to Gosport Borough Council.
[2] In 2014, the Defence Infrastructure Organisation announced plans to release most of the rest of the retained land at Royal Clarence Yard to Gosport Borough Council.
[7] In the late 17th Century, a local brewer, "Captain" Henry Player, founded a brewery on the site and started supplying beer to the Royal Navy.
In that year, the Weevil brewery was purchased by the Victualling Commissioners with a view to consolidating their brewing operations in Portsmouth on a single site.
Wyatt's brewery remained operational into the 19th century: in 1831 the daily shipboard issue of beer ended (to be replaced by the rum ration), but brewing still continued (albeit on a much smaller scale) until the 1850s.
With regard to Gosport, however, the Admiralty initially resisted the idea; that it went ahead was largely thanks to its being championed by the Duke of Clarence (Lord High Admiral at the time).
[10] By 1828, George Ledwell Taylor was engaged as an architect; he was already involved in modernising Wyatt's brewery which (along with the adjacent cooperage) was to remain in place and in use as part of the new complex.
The north wing was largely given over to the industrial Bakery and contained state-of-the-art machinery designed by pioneering food technologist Sir Thomas Grant.
[13] Apart from the brewing, baking and butchering complexes, Taylor laid out a number of residential and administrative buildings around an open space just inside his new Main Gate (on Flagstaff Green, where Weevil House had once stood).
Salted meat continued to be provided to ships into the 20th century, and the Bakery appears to have remained in operation until after the First World War (whereupon it too was converted into a storehouse).
It suffered during the Blitz with several buildings being damaged or destroyed by bombs, including the south wing of the Granary complex, the Salt Meat Store, the Main Offices, Wyatt's Brewery and the northern edge of the Cooperage.
In June 2017, Gosport Borough Council included Royal Clarence Yard as a "Character Area" and proposals for its eventual development in a draft "Waterfront and Town Centre Supplementary Planning Document".
[19] In November 2018, the MoD put the 5.2-acre (2.1 ha) site up for sale, emphasizing its 'full deep-water access to Portsmouth Harbour, making it ideally suitable for commercial marine activity'.
[20] The following year the site was purchased by the South Shields-based UK Docks, with a view to redeveloping it as 'a unique specialist marine hub'.
