Bellona Arsenal

Bellona Arsenal is a complex of brick workshops and ruins near Midlothian, Virginia, left from a federal arsenal built in the 1810s. The quadrangle once held eight stone-walled buildings, including a three-story main arsenal, officers' quarters, four workshops and a barracks, with a thick-walled powder magazine outside to the west. Most were torn down about 1872. Three two-story brick workshops with hipped roofs and segmental arched openings remain, along with the roofless magazine and the ruins of Major John Clarke's foundry, which he established in 1814. The foundry supplied government cannon through the antebellum years and served the Confederacy, and the arsenal stored Clarke's guns from 1817. The government declared the arsenal surplus in 1837, and it was sold in 1856 and again in 1877. The workshops were renovated as a residence beginning in 1942. The listing recognizes the site's industrial and military history and its setting above the James River valley.