[2] During the Age of Sail, the yard continued to be used for shipbuilding and repair work more or less consistently; in the 1830s a specialist factory within the dockyard oversaw the introduction of steam power for ships of the Royal Navy.

Like its counterpart Deptford Dockyard, Woolwich was probably chosen for its position – on the south bank of the tidal River Thames conveniently close to Henry's palace at Greenwich – and for its proximity to deep water.

Several other ships were built here after Great Harry, but in the 1520s shipbuilding appears to have ceased (the site may have been prone to flooding, a problem that caused the closure of another Royal Dockyard further downstream in Erith at around this time).

In the years that followed, the dockyard was expanded; its facilities included slipways for shipbuilding, timber yards, saw pits, cranes, forges, a mast house and several storehouses.

A clock house was built in 1670 (containing a mould loft for drawing up full-scale ship designs) and in 1698 a palatial Great Storehouse was erected.

The wharf and its buildings were improved and rebuilt at regular points through the 16th and 17th centuries; as late as 1664 a large new brick storehouse was provided "to lodge ships' carriages in".

In 1695–1697 the ropeyard was largely rebuilt, under the supervision of Edmund Dummer; by the end of the century it included a double-ropewalk, 1061 ft long, a parallel single-ropewalk of similar length, a brick storehouse with a clock tower, houses for the yard's senior officers and various other buildings, all enclosed within a perimeter wall topped by watchtowers.

The ropeyard remained in service until 1832, by which time similar establishments in other Royal Dockyards had begun to come to the fore; the site having been sold in 1833, its buildings were demolished soon afterwards, in 1835.

[4] The fortunes of the yard had waned toward the end of the seventeenth century; in 1688 its work was valued at £9,669, in contrast to nearby Deptford (£15,760), not to mention the (by now much larger) Royal Dockyards at Portsmouth (£35,045), and Chatham (£44,940).

[2] In the first half of the eighteenth century, however, it gained a renewed momentum: the site doubled in size, as did the workforce, and even in the first decade of the 1700s there were more ships launched from Woolwich than from any other English yard.

Centrally positioned in the expanded yard, a new clock house was built, containing offices for the various departments of the dockyard, and with it a new main gateway (replacing the old entrance which had been located further to the east).

In 1802 a steam-driven bucket dredger was brought into service at Woolwich (prior to this, convicts had been used to dredge the quayside by hand) but still the silting persisted; nevertheless, the yard continued to be developed: in 1814 a large smithery or metal-working factory was added to produce anchors and other iron items.

From 1831, Woolwich found a new lease of life as a specialist yard for marine steam engineering (a relatively new technology which was being developed commercially at nearby Millwall).

New buildings were constructed on the site for steam manufacturing and maintenance, including a boiler shop for manufacturing boilers, foundries for brass, copper and iron work, and an erecting shop for assembling the steam engines; by 1843 all were integrated into a single factory complex, with a single large chimney drawing on all the various forges and furnaces by way of underground flues.

Older ships still came to Woolwich for engine repairs and maintenance, but by the end of the Crimean War the steam factory's days were numbered.

Surprisingly though, the dockyard had managed to remain active in shipbuilding and its facilities continued to be upgraded and expanded through the 1850s and early 1860s; during that time a new rolling mill and an armour plate shop were built as well as a sizeable new sail loft and rigging store.

Ultimately, though, the yard could not keep pace with the emerging needs of the new ironclad warships, and by 1865 it was clear that both Woolwich and Deptford Dockyards were destined for closure.

Cunis later (1971) formed Cubow Ltd, a joint venture with Hay's Wharf Ltd, to build boats, including substantial sailing vessels of up to 1,000 tons, a 1973 fishing trawler later chartered by the Ministry of Defence for use as a minesweeper (HMS David), a cargo vessel (Ambience), the Naticia (a London leisure cruise boat) and the Beagle, still in use around the Galápagos Islands in 2023.

[26] From 1878 part of the Dockyard was given over for the Commissariat Reserve Stores; over the next decade it became the main supply depot providing food and forage for overseas garrisons and expeditionary forces.

The older, eastern portion of the site remained in Ministry of Defence hands, used for storage, workshops and offices, until the closure of the Royal Arsenal in the 1960s.

In the 1980s and 1990s the Thames Path was extended to the area (along the riverside between Warspite Road and the Woolwich Ferry carpark; it is also part of the NCN1 and C14 cycle routes).

[40] However, the build-to-rent development had "26 main deviations to the original planning permission" granted in 2012, and in September 2023, Greenwich Council ordered Comer Homes to demolish the blocks.

The firm was ordered to replace "visually intrusive" orange cladding, provide promised accessibility features, undertake fire safety work and make public realm improvements at the base of the buildings.

[48] On Woolwich Church Street, a late 18th-century guard house and police office with neoclassical features stand alongside the former dockyard gates.