The Royal Navy victualling yard, East Smithfield, London

Abstract

• London’s Royal Navy victualling yard, the first large-scale naval food supply base in Britain, was founded in 1560 and closed in 1785, having proved inadequate for the needs of the expanding Georgian navy. A substantial part of the ground plan of the yard was recorded and combined with documentary evidence to identify slaughterhouses and yards, salt houses and pickling sheds, bakeries, coopers’ workshops, storehouses, and the offices and dwellings of yard personnel. The work reported on here represents the most extensive excavation and post-excavation analysis of an early post-medieval naval victualling establishment in this country and will be of especial interest to archaeologists and naval historians.