Gunwharf Quays is a shopping centre located in the Portsea area of the city of Portsmouth in England. It was constructed in the early 21st century on the site of what had once been HM Gunwharf, Portsmouth. This was one of several such facilities which were established around Britain and the Empire by the Board of Ordnance, where cannons, ammunition and other armaments were stored, repaired and serviced ready for use on land or at sea. Later known as HMS Vernon, the military site closed in 1995, and opened to the public as Gunwharf Quays on 28 February 2001 after six years of reconstruction (which included the restoration of some of the surviving 18th and 19th-century Gun Wharf buildings). The landmark Spinnaker Tower, which stands close to the site on pilings in Portsmouth Harbour, was opened on 18 October 2005. History An Ordnance Yard (the Old Gun Wharf) was established on land reclaimed from the sea to the north of the old Mill Pond (which survives today as the canal) in 1706. The site was extended by reclaiming further land from the sea to the south of the old Mill Pond to create the New Gun Wharf in circa 1800. The Grand Storehouse (built as part the New Gun Wharf and now known as the Vulcan Building) was completed in 1814. A wide range of ordnance-related equipment had to be accommodated within the Yard. Gun carriages in particular took up a lot of space, and were prone to decay if left outside. Cannons and cannonballs, on the other hand, could be stored in the open air without too much damage being done, as described here in 1817: Every ship in ordinary has on the wharf her guns, placed in regular rows, each ship's guns by themselves, with the name of the ship they belong to, painted in capital letters on the first gun of each parcel. The balls are formed in pyramids from 42 pounders to the lowest bores, every size in a pyramid by themselves; the bomb shells are also placed in the same regular order. In 1824 a set of storehouses along the southern edge of the site were converted to form barracks for the Royal Marine Artillery (the first time that this section of the Corps had been provided with its own separate barracks). In 1858 the Royal Marine Artillery moved out (first to Fort Cumberland, then