Hills Dry docks consisted of two graving docks and surrounding buildings belonging to Messrs Charles Hill and Sons (later Hills Dry Docks & Engineering Co., Ltd.) situated toward the north end of the western side of the Bute East Dock (constructed 1855?59, NPRN 34242). The company also had another smaller, earlier graving dock and works on the West Bute Dock (NPRN 34257), situated near Herbert Street to the north west (NGR ST1882475845).

The first graving dock on the Bute East Dock was built prior to 1880, possibly as early as the early 1860s, with the second built immediately to the south later in the nineteenth century. Surrounding the graving docks were various substantial slate-roofed brick buildings. By 1930 when the business went into liquidation these included boiler shops, heating furnaces, and riggers? stores on the north side and machine shops, offices, a power house, saw mills, and stores on the south side, as well as various cranes, winches, and a weighbridge. The graving docks had stone kerbs and stepped sides of black brick and were able to accommodate large steamers. The northern dock measured 400ft (approx. 121.92m) long with an entrance 49ft 5in (approx. 15.06m) wide and a depth above the blocks of 15ft (approx. 4.57m). The southern dock was 395ft (120.4m) long, 44ft 5in (approx. 13.54m) wide, and 14ft 3in (approx. 4.34m) deep.

By the mid-1980s the docks had been closed, partially filled, and partially covered by a new street. They have since been entirely filled and built over by the residential area between Scooner Way, Llansannor Drive, Celerity Drive, and Craiglee Drive in Atlantic Warf.

(Sources: `Sales particulars for Hills Dry Docks & Engineering Shops, Bute Docks, Cardiff, 17th July 1930?, NMR Archives, ESP 1407; NMR Site File Glamorgan/Industrial/ST17NE; Allen, `Engineering and Shipbuilding? in Ballenger, Cardiff: An Illustrated Guide (Cardiff: 1896), 114-17 (115))
A.N. Coward, RCAHMW, 12.07.2018