Gunwharf Quays
The East Plaza at Gunwharf Quays
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| Location | Portsmouth, Hampshire, England |
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| Owner | Land Securities |
| No. of stores and services | 93 plus a cinema, 25 pubs and restaurants |
| No. of floors | 2 |
| Website | www.gunwharf-quays.com |
Gunwharf Quays is an outlet retail destination with 90 outlet stores and 30 restaurants, pubs and cafés located in Portsmouth, UK. It was constructed in the early 21st century on the site of what had once been HM Gunwharf, Portsmouth. This was one of several such facilities which were established around Britain and the Empire by the Board of Ordnance, where cannons, ammunition and other armaments were stored, repaired and serviced ready for use on land or at sea. Later known as HMS Vernon, the military site closed in 1995, and opened to the public as Gunwharf Quays after six years of reconstruction (which included the restoration of some of the surviving 18th and 19th-century Gun Wharf buildings). The landmark Spinnaker Tower, which also stands on the site, was opened a few years later.
Before the Gun Wharf was built the area was nothing more than marshy ground lying below the waterline. The main feature on this particular stretch of shoreline was the sizeable Mill Pond, which served to power a pair of tide mills on the waterfront. (When the Gun Wharf expanded in the 1770s, the Ordnance Board purchased these mills and consolidated them into a single establishment known as the King's Mill; it went on to produce flour for the military until 1868 when it was destroyed by fire.)
An Ordnance Yard (Gun Wharf) began to be established on the present site in the late 17th century (replacing an earlier Wharf on the Point). Built to serve the ordnance needs of the Fleet, the Dockyard and the town fortifications, it was constructed on reclaimed marshland between Old Portsmouth and Portsea, just north of the body of water known as the Mill Pond (a vestige of which survives today as the Canal within Gunwharf Quays). In the 1770s a decision was taken to extend the Yard to the south, so further land was reclaimed, extending the Yard and doubling its size. The original Yard and its extension (known respectively as "Old Gun Wharf" and "New Gun Wharf") functioned as two halves of a single operation. They were linked, by way of a swing bridge, across a short Canal, which guaranteed a flow of water in and out of the Mill Pond; it later formed the entrance to a triangular Basin where loading and unloading of vessels could take place.
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