i have walked past the old gunpowder house in the old naval base countless times. i have been inside on the ground floor for several art exhibitions but this year for the first time i saw there was an exhibition upstairs. i love these old buildings and i have lived in this tiny town for 35 years but never been upstairs in the gunpowder house.
usually the door is shut but not today!
i am not really interested in this particular art exhibition but that is no reason to pass up the opportunity to check out the building
this is going to be cool
being a carpenter the first thing i check out is the roof structure
some original wood from 1779 is still in tact but there was a major restoration a few years ago. it looks awesome.
this is the window facing back toward the rest of the shipyard at least 200 meters away. many of those buildings are wooden so they kept the powder well away from them and built this powder house at the far south end of the base near the shallow beach
the window is rarely opened. from the outside what i usually see is the shutter dating the building. the other buildings in shipyard and naval base were completed in the 1750s and 60s so this was the last the be constructed
these are the original floorboards. really rustic.
and the original bricks. i can tell because they are thinner than those produced later.
while modern day repairs are done with great care to maintain or restore the original look it has not always been that way. the building was in use by the military for over two centuries and architectural design was not always a priority. nonetheless even these older repairs look nice and the recent restoration has made the effort to display the building throughout it's entire history.
there is only one window facing the sea and it is more elaborate than the back wall windows. the thickness of the walls is quite impressive. this building was clearly built to handle an explosion from within or an attack from without
now in the summer the beach beyond the base is a popular spot for families as it shallow for at least 100 meters
the windows on the back wall don't have much view and even though they are not the original windows they are still quite interesting.
there is a moat behind the building that has become totally overgrown
so it is easy enough to climb. from the top of the moat the windows with the closed shutters look a bit comical. they are painted with linseed oil based paint and perhaps they thinned it too much or they put on too much and it dripped down. i can't blame them if they never used linseed oil paint before. it takes a few days to dry and drips easily if you are too heavy handed. but it is far better for preserving the wood. therefore it is required to be used on historical buildings like this. these drips are yet another stage in the history of the building and i smile when i see them.
before i left i took this shot of the top of the stairs and entrance to the main room.
the brick stairs are all new but with the dark behind me and the light from the open door downstairs it gave quite a contrast in the photo
suddenly this figured appeared and since i was blinded by the light. it was a bit of a shock
after all in an old building like this
you never know what really goes on when the lights are low!
if you are interested in more info about this building here is a link
https://www.forsvarsbygg.no/no/festningene/qr/fredriksvern-shipyard/the-gunpowder-house/
my house is on that map as well, close to the top. so you can see it is a short walk to the old naval base which is now a park with lots of cultural activities especially in the summer