WOOLWICH, a town of England, in Kent, is situated on the south bank of the Thames, and consists of several irregular streets, the houses of which are well built. The church dedicated to Mary Magdalene is a spacious brick building, with a plain square tower.
Woolwich is chiefly celebrated for its dock-yard, arsenal, laboratory, and military academy. The dock-yard extends about five furlongs along the river, and is about a furlong wide. It contains two dry docks, several slips, three mast ponds, a smith's shop, forges worked by steam for making anchors, a model loft, store houses, and sheds for timber. During the last war the number of artifi cers employed in the dock-yard was 2000, but it is now not much more than half that number.
The arsenal occupies nearly 60 acres, and con tains different piles of brick building, the oldest of which are the foundry and the old military acade my. In the foundry are three furnaces, the largest of which will melt about seventeen tons of metal at once, and a machine for boring cannon. (See BORING MACHINE.) In another building there are two boring machines and various workshops for finishing off the ordnance after they have been proved. The arsenal contains an immense store of cannon arranged in tiers of great length, with mortars, howitzers, carronades, and all the appa ratus of the field and battering train, besides gun carriages and military wagons.
Near the foundry is the laboratory, where barbs, carcasses, grenades, &c. are charged, and rockets, cartridges, and fire-works made up for the army and navy. In the arsenal there has been erected a planing machine driven by a steam engine, of which we have given a description and drawings in our article PLANING MACHINE. The number of artifi cers employed in the arsenal is about 3000, exclu sive of about 900 convicts.
The royal military academy has been already described in our article ACADEMY. The building,
designed by Wyatt, is of the castellated form, and consists of a centre and two wings united by corri dors. The centre is a quadrangle, with octagonal towers at the angles, and contains the academy rooms. The wings contain the apartments of the cadets and officers. The building, which is of brick, is 600 feet long. The hall is elegant. The whole building cost £150,000.
The artillery barracks is a very extensive build ing, having its principal front nearly 1200 feet long. It is composed of six ranges of brick build ings united by an ornamental centre of stone, and by other four lower buildings which occupy the spaces between each range. These latter buildings, as well as the ornamental centre, are built of stone, with doric colonnades. They contain a library and reading-room, a chapel, a mess-room, and a guard room. At a little distance is a new riding school built of brick, on the model of an ancient temple. It is about 150 feet long and 63 broad. Between the royal arsenal and the dock-yard is an extensive building about 400 yards long, including a rope work where cables of all dimensions are manufac tured. The other buildings are an ordnance hospital, a veterinary hospital, barracks, and a handsome hospital for the fourth division of ma rines. The most conspicuous of the detached buildings is a pagoda 115 feet in diameter, which was brought to Woolwich from Carlton-House Gardens, where it was used as a banqueting room for the sovereigns after the battle of Waterloo. It is now used as a repository for models. The population of the town of Woolwich in 1821, was 2520 houses, 4293 families, 1652 ditto in trade, males 7606, females 9402, and total population 17,008.