London (England) -- Description and travel; London (England) -- History -- 18th century
(2) To the eastward of the church stands a noble pile of building,
usually called the armoury, begun by King James II. and finished by King
William III., being three hundred and ninety feet in length, and sixty in
breadth: the stately door-case on the south side is adorned with four
columns, entablature and triangular pediment, of the Doric order. Under
the pediment are the king’s arms, with enrichments of trophy-work, very
ornamental. It consists of two lofty rooms, reaching the whole length of
the building: in the lower room is a complete train of artillery,
consisting of brass cannon and mortars fit to attend an army of a
hundred-thousand men; but none of the cannon I observe there were above
four-and-twenty pounders; the large battering-pieces, which carry balls
of thirty-two and forty-eight pounds weight, I perceive, are in the
king’s store-houses at Deptford, Woolwich, Chatham, and Portsmouth. In
the armoury also we find a great many of the little cohorn mortars, so
called from the Dutch engineer Cohorn, who invented them for firing a
great number of hand-grenades from them at once; with other extraordinary
pieces cast at home, or taken from the enemy.
In the room over the artillery is the armoury of small arms, of equal
dimensions with that underneath, in which are placed, in admirable order,
muskets and other small arms for fourscore thousand men, most of them of
the newest make, having the best locks, barrels, and stocks, that can be
contrived for service; neither the locks or barrels indeed are wrought,
but I look upon them to be the more durable and serviceable, and much
easier cleaned. There are abundance of hands always employed in keeping
them bright, and they are so artfully laid up, that any one piece may be
taken down without moving another. Besides these, which with pilasters
of pikes furnish all the middle of the room from top to bottom, leaving
only a walk through the middle, and another on each side, the north and
south walls of the armoury are each of them adorned with eight pilasters
of pikes and pistols of the Corinthian order, whose intercolumns are
chequer-work of carbines and pistols; waves of the sea in cutlasses,
swords, and bayonets; half moons, semicircles, and a target of bayonets;
the form of a battery in swords and pistols; suns, with circles of
pistols; a pair of gates in halberts and pistols; the Witch of Endor, as
it is called, within three ellipses of pistols; the backbone of a whale
in carbines; a fiery serpent, Jupiter and the Hydra, in bayonets, &c.
But nothing looks more beautiful and magnificent than the four lofty
wreathed columns formed with pistols in the middle of the room, which
seem to support it. They show us also some other arms, which are only
remarkable for the use they have been put to; as the two swords of state,
carried before the Pretender when he invaded Scotland in the year 1715;
and the arms taken from the Spaniards who landed in Scotland in the year
1719, &c.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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