Chalk: An archive

An archive of chalk on the timbers of a ceiling, in a building inaccessible to the public for two hundred years.

Traces of human existence that could be lost forever with the wiping of a cloth; a careless action, or an act of malice.

What will happen to these traces (these signs) when the building is regenerated for a future use?

These marks cover (uncover?) a period from the early 1830’s to the late 1990’s. Social change is reflected in the nature of the markings, as dated cursive initials give way to full names and comments, to achievements and insults.

Occasionally one discovers an epitaph; but all of these chalk scratches are a memorial of sorts, remembering the passing through this space of people who have found a place here, who have made it more than an architectural achievement.

The Royal William Yard is a post-Napoleonic naval victualling store in the old garrison town of Stonehouse, now part of the inner city of Plymouth. Designed down to the smallest detail by the architect Sir John Rennie, it has been described as “among the most remarkable examples of an early 19^th century planned layout of industrial buildings anywhere in England”¹. It is enclosed behind a great wall, and consists of ten purpose-built structures whose names often reveal their original role: Slaughterhouse, Guardhouse, Brewhouse, Clarence, Cooperage, the New Cooperage, Mills & Bakery, Residence One (home to the Yard’s superintendent), Residence 2 (the Deputy’s house), and Melville.

It is in Melville, the grandest building with its dominant clock-tower, where one discovers an archive that, by all reasoning, should not exist. It seems to have been a tradition in this building (on the first and second floors) to leave your initials with a date on the wooden timbers that support the ceilings. From the 1830’s autographs appear, perhaps signifying the end of a tenure or apprenticeship, or perhaps the day you left the yard’s employ, or maybe just on the day you felt brave enough to leave your mark for posterity. This tradition continued throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, right up until the yard’s closure by the Admiralty in 1992; it was still added to occasionally by workmen who entered the site after this time. In the late 1990’s Melville hosted the degree shows of a local art college, and some of the graduating students also left their mark (and some rather interesting comments) amongst those of the dockyard workers.

There are hundreds of initials and names here, representing just a handful of those who passed through the Royal William Yard, serving the needs of the Royal Navy during the height of empire and its steady decline.

The building is soon to be regenerated, possibly as a five star hotel (the whole yard is being redeveloped as a waterside leisure and living space) and it does leave a dilemma as to what to do with the timbers once the building is revamped. One hopes that the new owners will not simply clean the markings off, and one assumes that the relevant steps to protect them have been set in place. But who knows? Plymouth tore nearly all traces of its past down after the blitz in a mad rush to become a fully modern city, and now appears largely to be a city bereft of its soul.

This is a precarious archive that has survived because Melville is well built and the timbers are reasonably protected from the elements, and because it has acted as some kind of honour roll for the staff who have worked there. I am reminded of the Joseph Beuys “lectures” currently displayed at the Tate Modern, in which a series of chalk marked blackboards are presented, protected by sealed glass and security guards, leaving nothing to chance². The chalk archive in Melville, surely one of the finest archives of lived social history in the UK, is protected by nothing more than the fact that so far no one has seen fit to wipe the traces off with a cloth.

1. Nikolaus Pevsner and Bridget Cherry, The Buildings of England: Devon (Yale University Press, 1989) pp653-654

2. Joseph Beuys, Lecture – Actions, 1972

 Jason Hirons, April 2005