Thereafter, some of the cuts that had been proposed in the 1981 Defence White Paper were reversed. The retention of a larger fleet meant that a larger workforce was retained at Portsmouth than had been envisaged (around 2,800); however the run-down of the old Dockyard went ahead, with dry docks 1–7 being closed, just under half the dockside cranes demolished and ten out of the nineteen major workshops on the site taken out of service. The dockyard's 'Edwardian "piece de résistance"', the Great Factory of 1905, ceased manufacturing in 1986 and was converted to serve as a warehouse.