Woolwich Dockyard

HM Dockyard, Woolwich
Woolwich, SE London
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 / 51.49444; 0.05611
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 - originally in north-west Kent, now in southeast London - 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.