(Updated, February 2018) The Royal Laboratory at Woolwich was constructed in 1696 for the purpose of manufacturing munitions. It became the centre of a larger site formally renamed the Royal Arsenal in 1805, at the desire of George III, when he made a visit there. This view is from inside the towered gateway at the south end of the Square, looking towards the River Thames, at the west end of the modern Arsenal site. The topsails of two ships and a cutter are in distant view beyond. The round turret at rear left, outside the Square, is the Tudor tower of Tower Place, an earlier building on the Arsenal site when more generally known as Woolwich Warren. The two double-storey buildings facing each other, with central pediments, are the only two elements of the Square that survive and were restored (now as housing) in 2015. The process being shown appears to be the filling and sealing of mortar bombs, and their stacking in the pyramids shown. The three men to the left, and two at a similar bench in the background, appear to be either reaming out the holes in the bombs or hammering sealing stoppers into them after they are filled. At two wooden tubs, pairs of men in protective coverall coats are using hand-held bellows to fill them with powder. The single worker, centre right, is using a fuse extractor, a device for withdrawing sealing plugs or timing fuses from bombs; one is illustrated in plate 27, p. 143, of John Muller's, 'A Treatise of Artillery' (London: printed by John Millan, 1780). This drawing is one of 11 by the same hand of which the numbers are non-sequential owing to the different boxes in which they are stored (by mount size): PAG9664, PAH4071-72, PAI0744-46, PAI7701-03, PAJ2303 and PAJ2312. Four (including this one) were reproduced as a double-page spread in the 'Illustrated London News' of 1 January 1916, pp.14-15, as having recently appeared at auction by Messrs Hodgsons' and been bought by the ILN for that purpose. The brief accompanying text is a 'compare and contrast' note on the Arsenal's role at that time in supplying British and Imperial forces in the First World War. It is likely that the drawings were later given to the NMM by Sir Bruce Ingram, managing proprietor and editor of the ILN. He was himself a notable collector, especially of pictures, and a generous donor to and early supporter of the Museum. It has been suggested that the artist was Gamaliel Massiot, an obscure figure of probably Huguenot French ancestry who was appointed as the second drawing master of the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich from 1744 to 1768. He was then replaced by Paul Sandby as principal master (at £150 p.a. to 1796) but retained as his subordinate. He also appears to have had private pupils and probably stopped working shortly before his death. The 'Royal Kalendar' for 1782 still lists him as on the Academy staff at £100 p.a. but he died at nearby Plumstead in March that year and was buried at the parish church of St Nicholas on 6 April. His will, made in 1774, had already been proved on 3 April, naming brothers and sisters, and his executrix was his daughter Frances (his only child with his wife Catherine). She was baptized at St Giles, Holburn on 19 July 1747 and married George Kealer (or Thealer) at Woolwich on 19 August 1775. Massiot could easily have done the drawings since at this time the Academy, of which the original building also survives, was just north of the Laboratory: its central entrance pediment may be that just visible above the Laboratory ridge-line immediately to the right of the Tudor tower in which, from 1744, Massiot himself was allocated a room, though he was living at Plumstead by 1775. Regrettably, other work by him with which to make comparisons is elusive, though there are stylistic similarities in that of his better known pupil, the military artist Colonel Thomas Davies. We are grateful to Ken Timbers and Andrew Cormack for their comments on this group.