Between 1720 and 1735 the Stuart yard was largely dismantled to make way for larger and more substantially built structures and the core of the buildings that survive today were erected at this time. These include the Main Gate, 1719 (shown in photograph to the right), Clocktower Building, 1723 (built as a Present Use Store at the head of the dry docks); Sail & Colour Loft, 1723; Hemp Houses, 1729 and Officers' Terrace, 1723-33 (see photograph below left).
The middle years of the Century saw the erection of the dockyard's surviving timber framed and timber clad buildings, the Mast Houses & Mould Loft (1753-58), Wheelwrights' Shop (c 1785) and the north and south Timber Seasoning Sheds (1774).
Today they remain unique survivors of the very large number of buildings and other structures built in this manner in the home dockyards but no longer in existence. The Mould Loft with its two floors, one laid immediately on top of the other, almost certainly contain the remains of the lines of both Victory, begun in 1759, and over a century later, those of Achilles, the first iron battleship to be built in a Royal Dockyard. Archaeological investigation of the floor beneath the Wheelwrights' Shop has revealed an unprecedented collection of ships' timbers, 169 of them, all consistent with having come from a single ship of the line of the late 18th century.
