UK market review - number 27, 2011
Origins of Empire
The Master Shipwright’s House and Naval Offices, Deptford
Commenced in 1708, this house was the home and offices of the Master Shipwright of the King's Yard, the most prestigious of the Royal Naval Dockyards at Deptford, for over 150 years. Deptford's Master Shipwrights oversaw a staff of thousands, building ships at an astonishing rate, especially during periods of warfare. In 1710 and 1711, ten warships were built here and a further five rebuilt. Between 1708 and 1869, 202 ships were constructed, those of the King’s Yard overseen by its Master Shipwright from this property looking over the Yard and downstream to Wren's superb Royal Naval Hospital at Greenwich, itself completed in 1712. This was a time at which Britain was seizing its opportunity to dominate the seas and thus the world. The King's Yard was at the very centre of an imperial machine.
The Master Shipwright's House and Offices are currently being marketed by our London Country Houses Office. Excess £5 million.
Under the circumstances, it was perhaps justifiable that, when new Master Shipwright Joseph Allin was appointed in 1705, he complained that the Tudor house he inherited was unsuitable for his status. Plans for a grand house with riverside gardens and the Navy's first purpose-built offices, were approved.
The new house will have been a familiar sight to Londoners, who attended launches in numbers of up to 20,000, according to The Times of 1810. The painting below shows the launch of HMS St Albans in 1747, with the Master Shipwright's house on the left.
Allin's tenure encompassed the building of some of the Navy's most renowned warships and the peak of productivity referred to above. Less happily for him, when his house was discussed in Parliament, it was not in the admiring tones for which he must have hoped. Described, Hansard records, as "the Shipwright’s Palace", its final cost, £300 more than the generous budget of £525, generated accusations of extravagance and even corruption. Allin eventually left his post in 1715 and died five years later. His legacy is these buildings, which continued in their original role until 1869, were to become the only notable properties in the area to survive the bombings of WWII and which are now over 300 years old.
A new office
for Canterbury
