The Commissioners House
The original house was built in 1640 for the First Resident Commissioner Phineas Pett, his family and servants. In 1703 it was knocked down and rebuilt in its present style for the new Resident Commissioner George St Lo. Lo felt that the original house did not compare to his previous, and newly built, residence in Plymouth and petitioned for a new one to be built of equal grandeur.
The house has changed little since its construction and it is the oldest intact naval building in Britain to survive. Internally the centrepiece is a magnificent ceiling painting above the main staircase. Painted on wood panel and depicting a scene the Greek gods assembling, it is believed to have come from the Great Cabin of the Royal Sovereign an important first rate ship of the line, broken up at Chatham in1768.
The Ropery
Rope has been made on this site since 1618 when the first Rope Yard buildings were completed. Originally there were two long timber single-storey buildings – one used for spinning, the other for rope forming and closing. The present building is a Double Ropehouse where spinning took place on upper floors with the Rope Walk, where the rope was made, on the ground floor.
Rope was an essential commodity in the age of sail with a first rate ship of the line needing around 31 miles of it – over 20 for its rigging alone. The Rope Yard operated as a separate business unit within the dockyard, run by the Clerk of the Ropeyard, with its own workforce recorded separately by the Navy Board to that of the rest of the dockyard.
Today the Ropery is unique –a traditional naval ropery, complete with its original Georgian and Victorian equipment – that still makes rope commercially.
