HM Dockyard, Woolwich![]() | |
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Woolwich, NW Kent | |
![]() Clock House (Dockyard offices, 1783–1784), the earliest surviving building on the Woolwich Dockyard site) | |
Coordinates | 51°29′40″N 0°3′22″E / 51.49444°N 0.05611°E |
Site information | |
Operator | Royal Navy |
Controlled by | The Navy Board (until 1832); the Admiralty (1832–1869). |
Other site facilities | The Gun Wharf, The Ropeyard and The Steam Factory |
Site history | |
In use | 1512–1869 |
Woolwich Dockyard (formally H.M. Dockyard, Woolwich, also known as The King's Yard, Woolwich) was an English naval dockyard along the river Thames at Woolwich in north-west Kent, where many ships were built from the early 16th century until the late 19th century. William Camden called it 'the Mother Dock of all England'.[1] By virtue of the size and quantity of vessels built there, Woolwich Dockyard is described as having been 'among the most important shipyards of seventeenth-century Europe'.[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. At its largest extent it filled a 56-acre site north of Woolwich Church Street, between Warspite Road and New Ferry Approach; 19th-century naval vessels were fast outgrowing the yard, however, and it eventually closed in 1869 (though a large part of the site remained in military hands for a further century). The former dockyard area is now partly residential, partly industrial, with remnants of its historic past having been restored.
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