Priddy's Hard

Priddy's Hard is an area of Gosport, in Hampshire, England now being developed for housing with part of the site retained as a museum. However, for some two hundred years it was a restricted-access site; first becoming a fort and then an armaments depot for Royal Navy and British Army weapons, explosives and other stores.

In 1750 by an Act of King George III the Board of Ordnance purchased 40 acres (16 ha) of agricultural land in Gosport and a boatyard from Jane Priddy and Fareham Vicar, Thomas Missing. This was to construct an earthen rampart as part of an extension of the defences of Portsmouth Harbour and the Royal Dockyard, the Gosport Lines. The ramparts were completed in 1757 and the land enclosed known to as Priddy's Hard Fort; it was manned by the Army. In the nineteenth century Priddy's Hard Fort was armed with 14 eighteen pounder guns.

In 1764, after a series of petitions sent to the Master-General of the Ordnance from the general public, the decision was made to remove gunpowder from Old Portsmouth, where it had been stored since the 1580s in the Square Tower. The problem had been raised as early as 1716 in a report to the Master-General by the local Ordnance Storekeeper in Portsmouth:

First. In carrying powder from thence to the hoys about 400 yards (367 m) distance to the end of the Point, and by shaking the barrels together in a Cart there has been a train along that street, which in War time is the most popular part of the town.

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