Qualla: HMS Sherwood (shore establishment)

HMS Sherwood (shore establishment): Introduction

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

A stone frigate is a ship that has never gone to sea. The Royal Navy borrowed the phrase from the Tudors, who moored hulks at dockyards and ran them as floating barracks, and the modern Navy uses it for shore bases that hold a captain's pennant the same way a warship does. HMS Sherwood sits in Chilwell, Nottinghamshire, roughly as far from the open ocean as you can get on the British mainland. Its reservists have served in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Gibraltar, on the deck of a Queen Elizabeth-class carrier - all of them volunteers who keep day jobs in the East Midlands and put on a uniform on weekends.

HMS Sherwood (shore establishment): The Ship Whose Name It Carries

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The first HMS Sherwood was not built in Britain. She was the USS Rodgers, an American four-stack destroyer of the kind Franklin Roosevelt traded to a desperate Britain in September 1940 - the destroyers-for-bases deal that gave the Royal Navy fifty elderly ships in exchange for C...

HMS Sherwood (shore establishment): From Carrington Street to Chetwynd

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The first naval reserve unit in Nottingham was a signals unit established in 1949 in the city centre. It moved to Carrington Street in 1961, settled into the rhythm of a Cold War reserve - drill nights, summer training, the slow accumulation of trade skills - and was formally com...

HMS Sherwood (shore establishment): Quiet Service in Loud Decades

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The reserves did not stay at home. Members of HMS Sherwood mobilised for Operation Telic in Iraq (2003-2011) and Operation Herrick in Afghanistan (2002-2014). Reservists served with British Forces Gibraltar and supported the London 2012 Olympic Games. In 2021 sailors from Sherwoo...

HMS Sherwood (shore establishment): Freedom of the City

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On 2 June 2018, HMS Sherwood was awarded the freedom of the city of Nottingham, becoming only the seventh Royal Naval Reserve unit to receive that honour. The freedom is an old civic gesture, ceremonial now rather than legal, that allows a military unit to march through the city ...

HMS Sherwood (shore establishment): An Uncertain Berth

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Chetwynd Barracks is scheduled to close in 2026, with the Ministry of Defence planning to release the majority of the site for development - some four thousand homes are projected for the land. Foresters House, where HMS Sherwood is based, is being retained, so the unit itself wi...