Bold, Weil-Defined Masses: Sir John Rennie and the Royal William Yard

In summer 1823 John Rennie wrote to the Navy Victualling Board about the new depot he was planning for them at Plymouth. The future Royal William Yard would, as he put it, be ‘capable of embracing every requisite purpose'. The new facility would not just comprise thousands of square feet of stores. There would also be buildings for brewing beer, milling grain, and baking biscuit, a slaughterhouse and a cooperage for making casks to store the prodigious output (Figs 1, 2 and 3).