Royal Recovery

Royal William Yard, standing dramatically at the tip of the Stonehouse peninsula in Plymouth, has been described by Pevsner as 'among the most remarkable examples of an early nineteenth-century planned layout of industrial buildings anywhere in England'. The Navy having no longer any use for it, the recently established Plymouth Development Corporation is currently about to decide on new users and acceptable new uses for 500,000 sq ft of largely Georgian floorspace. And since most of it is of Grade I listed historic building and scheduled ancient monument status, it is employing specialists, including a historian, to assemble the facts (as distinct from legends) about the place.