Gosport: Conservation and Heritage E-Book

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 235

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

Gosport is an ancient Hampshire borough that borders the Solent – the sheltered part of the English Channel that separates the Isle of Wight from the mainland, an area vital in Britain's defence. Geographically unique and home to many historically important buildings, it is no surprise that this Heritage Action Zone, recognised by Historic England in 2019, has drawn the attention of civic associations such as The Gosport Society, government agencies, and preservation and restoration property groups such as the Portsmouth Naval Base Property Trust. Working in conjunction with the Gosport Borough Council and other private and public sector interests, they aim to record, restore and re-purpose these historic sites for generations to come. In Gosport: Conservation and Heritage, local authors – experts in the fields of urban and natural restoration, history and heritage – have come together to tell the fascinating 800-year-old story of a maritime town inescapably connected with the defence of the realm.

Leseprobe

A Gosport Society publication in association withThe History Press and within the framework of theHeritage Action Zone (HAZ) Programme of Historic England.

First published 2023

The History Press

97 St George’s Place, Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© Louis Murray, 2023

The right of Louis Murray to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 8039 9289 1

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ Books Limited, Padstow, Cornwall.

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1    Gosport Heritage: Challenges and Changes Over the Past Twenty-Five Years – The Perspective of a Conservation Professional. Robert Harper.

2    Vantage Points from the Voluntary Sector: The Gosport Society Perspective. Louis Murray.

3    Heritage Open Days (HODS): Access for the Understanding of Local History. Sue Courtney and Louis Murray.

4    Bury House: Architecture, Redevelopment and Residence Over Time. Malcolm Stevens.

5    Battery No. 2 and the Diving Museum. Kevin Casey.

6    A Synopsis of the History of Gosport Museum and Gallery. Margaret Ventham.

7    Martin Snape (1852–1930): Celebrated Gosport Landscape Artist. Richard Martin.

8    Lee-on-the-Solent: A ‘New Town’ Development in the Borough of Gosport. Brian Mansbridge.

9    The Restoration of No. 5 Grange Farm. Robert Whiteley.

10  Keeping Track: Gosport Railways and their Urban Legacy. Peter Keat.

11  Priddy’s Hard: Repurposing a Historic Gunpowder Magazine and Munitions Depot. Giles Pritchard.

12  The Hovercraft Museum: Potential and Issues at Solent Airport, Lee-on-the-Solent. Brian Mansbridge.

Notes on the Contributors

Select Bibliography

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

PHOTO ATTRIBUTIONS

Initials accompanying each photographic image in the text attribute the image to its photographer or source. Where images were commissioned on a commercial basis, this is indicated below* and the company title and address are provided. Other images were provided at the discretion of the photographers and this is gratefully acknowledged here.

GP –

*Goodwins Photography, 15 Northcross Street, Gosport, Hampshire, PO12 1BE.

LM –

Louis Murray private collection.

GBC –

Gosport Borough Council.

BP –

*Browne Photographics, 5 Ariel Close, Lee-on-the-Solent, Hampshire, PO12 9FT.

HDS –

Historical Diving Society.

RM –

Richard Martin Gallery.

RW –

Robert Whiteley.

GSA –

Gosport Society image archive.

HM –

Hovercraft Museum, Lee-on-the-Solent. GRS – Gosport Railway Society.

PROJECT SUPPORT

The following agencies and individuals have supported this project in a variety of ways.

Grant moneys to assist in the production of the book have been gratefully received from Gosport Borough Council (GBC) and the Hampshire Archives Trust.

Robert Lihou Creative Services provided assistance with manuscript file handling and graphic representation.

Michelle Lees, the Heritage Action Zone (HAZ) manager at GBC, recorded progress on the work at HAZ Partnership quarterly meetings as part of Project 18. She also acted as liaison officer with Historic England in the concept developments phases of Project 18.

Brian Mansbridge, honorary treasurer of The Gosport Society, undertook bookkeeping and payment responsibilities in respect of the joint financing of the project by The Gosport Society, The History Press of Cheltenham, GBC and the Hampshire Archives Trust.

Staff at the Gosport Discovery Centre in Gosport, the Powder Monkey brewery and public house in Priddy’s Hard and the Hovercraft Museum in Lee-on-the-Solent, who offered access to premises and directions. Members of the Friends of Gosport Museum, who provided access and commentary to parts of the collection of the Gosport Museum and SEARCH Gallery.

The national agency Historic England provided a framework for discussion of an ‘informed conservation publication’ in the initial phases of their Heritage Action Zone programme as it pertained to the award of HAZ status to Gosport and the emergence in 2019 of a partnership to carry the programme forward. The Gosport Society adopted special responsibility for Project 18 under this programme.

Thanks are due to many of the residents of Gosport, the primary audience for this book, professional officers at GBC, and the members of The Gosport Society who have taken an interest in the project from the start.

INTRODUCTION

This book is a product of the long involvement of The Gosport Society and GBC in the conservation and, in many cases, restoration and repurposing of the built estate in the ancient Borough of Gosport in Hampshire, bordering The Solent, the sheltered part of the English Channel that separates the Isle of Wight from the mainland.

The Gosport Society has joined The History Press to produce an illustrated compendium of articles on indicative and interesting features and achievements of the heritage, social history and conservation movements as they pertain in this geographically unique corner of southeast Hampshire. The book may be considered part of the wider set of expressions championed by the national agency Historic England under its HAZ Programme. Similarly, the articles that make up the chapters of this book – written from the standpoint of direct and personal experience of each author – contribute to the ongoing and fascinating 800-year-old story of a maritime town inescapably connected with the defence of the realm.

WHY IS THE BOOK NEEDED?

•   It will be a legacy volume for the five-year (2019–23)Heritage Action Zones (HAZ) programme of Historic England. The prestigious HAZ status was accorded to Gosport in 2019.

•   The compendium character of the volume – accounts by expert authors linking themes of civic history to the defence-of-the-realm built estate, to modern imperatives for urban regeneration – reflects a holistic and lasting perspective on the need to protect and enhance what, in UK-wide landscape asset terms is a unique heritage, for future generations to know and enjoy.

•   A published and comprehensive, but always readable, telling of the story of Gosport is needed for ready use by municipal officers, council-tax-paying residents, conservation architects and visitors drawn from far afield to the international tourist attractions of Gosport such as the Diving Museum at Stokes Bay, Explosion: The Museum of Naval Firepower at Priddy’s Hard and the Royal Navy Submarine Museum at Haslar.

•   Recently researched accounts of significant buildings, such as Bury House at Alverstoke and the ancient Church of St Mary the Virgin in Rowner, are given public acknowledgement in this book. The accounts contribute to architectural and archaeological knowledge. They have become part of the accumulated wisdom that is now part of the archival record, helping to broaden public recognition of the heritage assets register in Gosport.

•   The book is expected to become a companion guide and backdrop to the successful and nationwide Heritage Open Days (HODs) festivals held throughout the nation annually in September. The Gosport Society was instrumental in helping to create HODs, probably the most widespread heritage and community history event in the country, more than twenty-five years ago.

Dr Louis Murray

The Gosport Society

Lee-on-the-Solent

May 2022

1

GOSPORT HERITAGE: CHALLENGES AND CHANGES OVER THE PAST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS – THE PERSPECTIVE OF A CONSERVATION PROFESSIONAL

Robert Harper

Gosport is a remarkable town. It is a place Historic England have described as being full of hidden gems. For such a small borough it has an exceptionally rich legacy of military sites. It is only in the last twenty-five years that we have begun to properly understand the true significance of the area as former military locations, fenced and wired off to the general public for decades, have come up for redevelopment. The challenge has been to ensure that the many historic buildings within these areas, and indeed across the borough, are given new life and secured in meaningful ways for future generations.

Gosport was fortunate in having resident and reputable local historian Lesley Burton as a strong champion of local heritage. This is brilliantly revealed in the numerous Gosport Society publications she was instrumental in publishing down the years. Beyond these, the breadth of published material on the social and civic history of the borough has been uneven. So, it has become crucial to gather and archive as much historic background information as possible through detailed research, input from expert consultants, archaeological surveys and local historians to ensure that the unique features of historic sites are properly recorded and understood so as to appropriately inform planning decisions and any subsequent repurposing and commercial development.

SOME SCENE SETTING

It is well worth giving an overview of just how multi-layered and complex Gosport history is by providing a brief summary of how the borough came to be what we see and know today.

There is early evidence of human activity in the Alver Valley and along the coast by hunter-gatherer communities. More settled evidence is shown in possible tumuli near Bury Cross and the partial remains of a suspected long barrow on Browndown North.

The Hampshire county archaeologist, David Hopkins, believes that the grid-like field systems covering the southern half of the borough, seen on old maps and reflected in much of the road layout today, may be evidence of potentially ancient field systems known as ‘ladders’. If the area was intensely farmed, this may explain the lack of evidence for Roman settlement. It is, however, difficult to pin down what was happening in the post-Roman Dark Ages. At that time, the area was in the heart of territory controlled by the incomers who history refers to as Jutes.

The more evidenced and subsequent centuries of Saxon settlement can be seen in place names such as Alverstoke, Elson, Privett and Rowner. There is also archaeological evidence of a Saxon settlement north-east of Grange Farm, excavated as the Rowner redevelopment was under way in the post-Second World War period. Perhaps therefore, it is no surprise that the Normans chose a key crossing point over the Alver River, near the modern and popular Apple Dumpling Bridge. This was close to this settlement, as is the location of a postulated motte and bailey, now a scheduled ancient monument.

In the medieval period the area was still relatively lightly populated. The borough is fortunate in having several buildings still extant: the stone core of the Old Rectory in Alverstoke; St Mary the Virgin old church at Rowner; Le Breton Farmhouse and Court Barn in Lee-on-the-Solent; and some timber-framed, thatched cottages in Alverstoke and Rowner. While the field systems remained in the south and west, the northern part of the borough underwent gradual forest clearance through ‘assarting’, where small, irregular fields and farmsteads were carved out of woodland that may have once stretched to the Forest of Bere to the north.

The most indicative features of the landscape are, perhaps, in and around the Alver Valley. The southern section of Grange Farm retains parts of an original medieval Cistercian lay-brothers’ farm. The Cistercians uniquely set up a system where the primary house (in this instance, Quarr Abbey on the Isle of Wight) developed a wide system of farms to exploit the countryside and bring in funds for the order. The Cistercians were leading experts on the use of water power and it can be no coincidence that their grange was established alongside the River Alver, nor that early maps show a highly complex system of water meadows extending for some distance. Recognisable parts of these still survive north and west of Grange Farm.

Gosport appeared as a new settlement in the early thirteenth century, close in time to the appearance of Portsmouth, across the harbour. Both were built to a rough grid of streets (in Gosport these are High Street, North Street, South Street and connecting north–south roads and alleys). Was the near-contemporary date a coincidence, or was this an attempt by the two sides of the harbour to compete for trade? With French raids beginning during the following century, it is clear that both sides of the harbour struggled to develop to their potential.

It is, in fact, the strategic importance of Gosport, and its vulnerability, that began to shape the landscape in the following centuries and why it became the focus for extensive military activity. First came a blockhouse at the harbour entrance to impede future raids, then under Henry VIII came earthworks nearby, and Haselworth Castle on or near the present-day Fort Monckton: all three clearly illustrated on a famous Cowdray engraving.

Leland described Gosport as a small fishing village. However, cartographic evidence suggests a more developed town with at least one substantial house in the vicinity of North Street and another large Jacobean building on the waterfront soon after 1600. The English Civil War had a direct impact, with the town used as the springboard for the bombardment, assault and capture of Portsmouth for Parliament, and a later Royalist revenge attack resulting in over twenty houses being burnt to the ground.

The Civil War was quickly followed by the Dutch Wars and, following the infamous raid on the Thames and Medway, a Dutch fleet sailed along the south coast threatening security. Three years later, Gosport prepared for future attacks by building earthworks around the town. In 1670, and known as the Gosport Lines, they included two small forts (Fort James on Borough Island and Fort Charles now under the former Camper & Nicholson boatyard site) and a substantial gun battery at Blockhouse. These early defences were designed to stop a landward bombardment of Portsmouth’s developing dockyard and were extended or adapted with almost every future threat. New demi-bastions were added at Blockhouse at the beginning of the eighteenth century; a northern extension to the Gosport Lines around 1760, including closing access to Priddy’s Hard; a panicked upgrade was instigated in the 1770s when news came of a Franco-Spanish ‘armada’ en route to the area in 1779; further upgrades proceeded in the Napoleonic Wars and a final overhaul of the Gosport Lines was undertaken around 1848 at a time of international tension.

The limited works of Henry VIII in Stokes Bay were replaced with several small artillery redoubts built to cover this potential invasion and landing point around 1781; Fort Monckton by 1790; outworks to Monckton and moats in the 1830s and two earth batteries on Browndown around 1852. These were soon followed by the Stokes Bay Lines: a long moat intersected with powerful gun batteries and an earth rampart for infantry. While these Lines were under construction, huge defensive forts were added at Blockhouse, Elson, Brockhurst, Rowner, Grange, Gomer and finally Gilkicker, closing landward access to the peninsula and securing additional firepower over Spithead. Gosport had effectively become one huge fortification.

Yet the defensive works did not stop there. As ordnance and warships developed, so new layers of defences appeared. Gosport has good examples of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century mass-concrete gun platforms, searchlight platforms, coastal defences from both world wars, and pill boxes along the Alver Valley, the coast north of Hardway, near Brockhurst and at Gilkicker.

In the Second World War, the significance of the town as a defensive hub was reflected in tank traps deployed just north of Fort Brockhurst and in the Alver Valley, while barrage balloon tethers within Fort Rowner are a reminder of the later threat by air. Indeed, Fort Blockhouse was the focus of the mining engineers in the late nineteenth century, specifically employed to oversee the deployment of minefields (both electrically operated and magnetic) on the harbour approaches, and the deployment of the first submarines at Fort Blockhouse, or HMS Dolphin, as the submarine home of the Royal Navy came to be called.

WIDER STRATEGIC SIGNIFICANCE

The fortifications described above highlight the complexity of the remarkable heritage of Gosport. But they reveal only a part of the civic story. As the fortifications appeared, and the naval base grew, so the strategic significance of the area was reflected in the growing involvement of all branches of the military:

•   Private victualling on contract to the Royal Navy in the eighteenth century was subsumed by the Admiralty in the 1740s at Weevil, then expanded significantly in the 1760s and 1820s to become Royal Clarence Victualling Yard, one of three major naval supply depots in Britain.

•   Haslar Royal Naval Hospital, claimed to be the biggest brick building in the world at the time of construction in 1746, was one Royal Navy answer to effectively imprisoning sick sailors behind high walls to prevent the loss of ships’ crews through desertion.

•   Numerous barracks complexes, for example, St George (1860s), Haslar (around 1802) and Browndown (the late 1800s), all remind us that troops were deployed here both to garrison the town and to move back and forth across the Empire and in time of war.

The Admiralty Experimental Works (now Qinetiq Marine Technology Park Haslar), set up by William Froude (1810–79), the ‘father of hydrodynamics’, is where naval ship design was thoroughly tested by scale models in the ship-testing tanks. The most fascinating discovery on this site in recent years was the Cavitation Tunnel. This is a huge, three-storey, hollow cylinder through which water could be pumped at varying speeds and from which propellers could be tested to minimise their sound signature and look for potential calibration problems. This example was constructed by Seimens-Schukert in the Second World War and was originally located in Hamburg. After the war, the entire tunnel and supporting machinery was brought back to this site and by the early 1950s was back in use within a purpose-built building, now Grade-II listed. A recent report by Historic England highlights the exceptional historic importance of this site.

The former Royal Naval Hospital Haslar. A major residential redevelopment project in Gosport some twenty years in the making. (GP)

The needs of the modern Royal Navy have meant that original structures of the oil fuel depot on Mumby Road could not realistically be retained. Research indicated that the site originated around 1907 with the first use of diesel-powered warships. The fuel was held in the many tanks on the site that, in many cases, dated from 1914. Machinery that operated all the pipes remained intact within a pump house at the north-west corner of the site and much of this dated from around 1907. In close liaison with the MoD archaeologist, the site was fully recorded, including the extent of the outworks to the ramparts along the eastern part of the site.

The Crimean War-era Gunboat Yard on Haslar Road is also unique to Gosport. It was clear during the conflict that the Russian Navy was reticent to come out of port to face allied fleets, so shallow-hulled gunboats were needed to move in close to bombard both ships and fortifications. The Gunboat Yard was constructed and used to house and repair a substantial fleet of such craft. While the site was reduced in capacity after that war, many of the original buildings and structures on site survive and have been written about at length by Historic England. It is perhaps from this site that Britain became notorious for its use of ‘gunboat diplomacy’ in the later nineteenth century.

AND STILL THE STORY CONTINUES

The former HMS Daedalus site in Lee-on-the-Solent (now known as Solent Airport) is one of the oldest and most unique military aviation sites in the UK. It lays claim to have been in at the birth of naval aviation around the time of the First World War and is noted especially for seaplane operations. Parts of the site were designated as a conservation area in 1999.

The Grange Airfield (around 1910), on the western edge of Gosport and fronting the Alver Valley, was eventually subsumed within HMS Sultan, the current Royal Navy aero- and marine-engineering training establishment. The modern base still retains many buildings relating to its earlier operational use for flight training and fighter squadrons. These are visible along Military Road. However, the original runways and aircraft taxiways have long been buried under housing estates.

The former submarine operational and training base at Fort Blockhouse retains a concentration of buildings and structures related to this former function. Therein lies the richest legacy of submariners’ buildings in Britain, included in the 1990s as part of the Haslar Peninsula Conservation Area. Understanding of the site has greatly benefited from the knowledge shared by writer-researcher Chris Donnithorne. Several buildings have been listed on the site and the scheduled area of the fort has recently been extended.

The c.1802 workshops of the Royal Military Artificers, which were directly involved in developing and repairing the defences across the area, were identified in Royal Clarence Yard and listed in around 2000. Similarly, endeavours have been made to unravel the complicated archaeology across the site of the St Vincent sixth-form college on Mumby Road. These include the site of the mill on Forton Creek, to the back of the college, and foundations revealing the extent of the military hospital of around 1796. Later buildings associated with the basing of the Royal Marine Light Infantry here are a reminder that on many military sites there is more beneath the surface than is still visible.

Further research is needed to help the understanding of the role and function of RN Coastal Forces, who operated from Haslar Creek under the general command of HMS Hornet until after the Second World War. The site, encompassing the Joint Services Adventurous Sail Training Centre and adjacent to the Gunboat Yard, straddles both sides of Haslar Bridge and is within a conservation area.

Provisional and ongoing research points to a probable system of First World War practice trenches on Browndown North. The system seems indicated on an aerial photograph of the 1950s and closely replicates a sketch of trench systems from an officer’s manual of 1917. We know the area was used for training in the First World War, but to have what appears to be two opposing sets of trenches across a no-man’s-land is probably unique in Britain and now requires more intense research to put names and regiments to the site.

Several military graveyards (including what may be an extensive one beneath the Qinetiq Haslar Road site), isolation hospitals on the upper foreshore of Portsmouth Harbour, and extensive munitions and gunpowder depots complete with military narrow-gauge railway lines are part of the relict landscape of Gosport. Ditto, Forton Prison, with its history as a hospital and prisoner-of-war camp over an extended period before its remodelling as a military prison. Researcher Abigail Coppins has completed useful work on the significant number of black prisoners held there during the French Revolutionary Wars.

Evidence for sea salt farming can be seen in a good surviving example of a ‘salting’, off the coast near Fleetlands, clearly shown on early seventeenth-century maps. To this needs to be added the development of new settlements that are largely the result of inward military investment: Newtown, Camdentown and Angleseyville in the early to mid-nineteenth century and the military estates in Hardway, Rowner and Bedenham in the twentieth century.

While the military was long omnipresent in Gosport, local trades such as brewing and the building of both naval and civilian vessels also played an important part in shaping the town. Blakes’ Brewery public houses, with their ornate, tiled fronts and now largely converted to homes, may be seen along the A32. Generations of Gosport people were born in the maternity hospital in Elson, which was also endowed by the Blakes family.

The Camper and Nicholson boatyards – now Endeavour Quay, adjacent to the Gosport Ferry Terminal – became world-famous yacht designers, particularly for the large J-Class yachts of the 1930s. And the area saw the ambitious development of Stokes Bay and Lee-on-the-Solent in the late nineteenth century as nouveau seaside resorts and desirable residential settlements.

As conservation officer at GBC, I have seen over seventy buildings added to the national register of listed buildings. This is primarily the result of Historic England carrying out detailed assessments of barracks, airfields, ordnance sites and hospitals. In addition, special cases worthy of inclusion are the Submarine Escape Training Tower in Blockhouse and the Second World War air-raid protection bunker on The Avenue. Gosport now has an extensive historic estate, with over 500 listed buildings, supplemented by eighteen conservation areas protecting key groups of buildings, historic village centres and several of the major military sites such as St George Barracks, Daedalus, Haslar and Priddy’s Hard.

THE RESTORATION AND REPURPOSING IMPERATIVE

Gosport may be said to have ‘thrived’ during the Napoleonic Wars! The military legacy was significantly expanded with each subsequent conflict. However, following the bombing ravages of the Second World War and the civil demolition around the town centre in the 1950s, this process has reversed. From the 1980s, in particular, the scale of military withdrawal has meant that Gosport has had to begin to reinvent itself.

This comes with numerous challenges. The many military sites were generally served by sea and suffer from poor road access. They were also built for specific historic functions, with highly unusual buildings that are often difficult and costly to convert.

Gosport’s discrete peninsular location, while it suited the military, does not make redevelopment easy. Land contamination, areas with depressed land values, the specialist skills required to convert listed buildings and masterplan complex sites, the increasing risk of flooding (with sites needing significant investment to put in sea defences), nature conservation and environmental constraints, and an already densely populated urban area add to the challenges.

The pedestrianised High Street of Gosport, looking west from the ferry terminal. The High Street layout has changed numerous times since 1950 and is set to change again from 2022. (GP)

Below are some key examples of the challenges faced over the last twenty-five years as major sites have become available and where the importance of retaining the fabric of historic buildings and the sense of place inherent in an historic site has been at the centre of regeneration proposals. In other chapters of this book, you will find additional reference material for these iconic and indicative sites.

Royal Clarence Yard

Whenever a major site moves towards commercial release, the first priority is to avoid too much discussion until a thorough historic assessment of the site and its buildings has been completed. This key work, involving both historians and archaeologists, sets the basis of what really matters on a given site. With regard to Royal Clarence Yard, GBC commissioned a leading expert on military sites, Dr David Evans, to review a number of buildings, leading to the listing of several on the site.

Subsequent discussion ensured that there was a detailed archaeological management plan for the site, a thorough understanding of its historic development and, as individual buildings came forward for conversion, a recognition and record of their architectural and historic merits. The site was subject to an overall masterplan and it was agreed that it would be developed in detail in a number of self-contained phases.

The past preserved. The impressive, centuries-old ceremonial gate into Flagstaff Green at Royal Clarence Yard. (GP)

The granary building and its massive, pillared under croft in Royal Clarence Yard. The under croft protected perishable cargoes as ships unloaded alongside. (GP)

With each phase, the local authority ensured that key historic buildings were repaired and commercial units were balanced against demands for residential use. In this way, for example, the restoration of the Cooperage came early in the phasing. Every building of historic interest has been preserved and converted to a new use and all development has been strictly controlled to ensure it respects the historic plan form of the site.

Sadly, while all the historic buildings were saved, the site still lacks the vitality envisaged for such an important mixed-use waterfront location. The biggest ongoing challenge has been securing commercial interest on a site with limited parking potential – a situation provoked by the developer securing at inquiry the right to significantly increase residential numbers at a time when local authorities were unable to secure parking standards.

St George Barracks

St George Barracks comprises a highly unusual series of linear barracks located just within the Gosport Lines and built following the Crimean War. The blocks north of Mumby Road were largely derelict in the late 1990s and the site south of Mumby Road, the location of the soldiers’ barracks with its impressive colonnaded veranda, was closing down as a military site.