From 1808 to 1814 the Admiralty in London could communicate with its ships in Yarmouth by a shutter telegraph chain. Ships were routinely anchored offshore during the Napoleonic Wars and the town served as a supply base for the Royal Navy. Part of an Ordnance Yard survives from this period on Southtown Road, probably designed by James Wyatt: a pair of roadside lodges (which originally housed senior officers) frame the entrance to the site, which contains a sizeable armoury of 1806, a small barracks block and other ancillary buildings. Originally the depot extended down to a wharf on the River Yare and was flanked by a pair of storehouses, but these and other buildings were destroyed in The Blitz. A grander survival is the former Royal Naval Hospital designed by William Pilkington, begun in 1806 and opened in 1811. Consisting of four colonnaded blocks around a courtyard, it served as a naval psychiatric hospital, then as a barracks. The barrack-master was Captain George Manby, during his time in post he invented the Manby mortar. The premises was transferred to the NHS in 1958. After its closure in 1993, the buildings were turned into private residences.