Chatterley Whitfield: area shaft building (23)

Former colliery equipment store (23) and electricity sub-station of circa 1948 with minor late-C20 alterations.

MATERIALS: exposed steel frame with infill panels of red brick and asbestos sheet roof coverings with continuous patent glazed roof lights.

PLAN: rectangular plan of two, two-storey parallel ranges with pitched roofs, and aligned roughly west to east. There are single-storey, mono-pitched lean-tos at the south-east and north-west corners of the building; the former containing the electricity sub-station and a lift shaft whose tower rises above the building.

EXTERIOR: each bay of the principal, east elevation has centrally-positioned wagon doors, the right-hand having a steel roller shutter. They are flanked by metal-framed windows, the outer ones being taller with a pedestrian entrance below, and there are a further four windows above the wagon doors. To the upper floor each range has three narrower windows with continuous steel bands to the heads and cills. There is also a wagon door (blocked) to the lean-to attached to the west end wall. The north and south side elevations each have twenty window bays with regularly-spaced, tall multi-pane metal windows to the ground floor and shallow windows of matching type to the upper floor, the window heads at eaves level. The south elevation has a central wagon door with a smaller window above. The east gable end has a similar arrangement of tall windows to the ground floor and narrower upper windows as the rest of the building. The left-hand range has a large central opening with a roller shutter and provides rail access into the building, and the lower part of the ground-floor windows have been blocked.

INTERIOR: it has a tall ground floor which is essentially an open workshop/storage made up of two main bays. They both originally had narrow rail tracks and overhead travelling cranes that formerly allowed for the mechanised handling of equipment throughout the ground-floor area, though only the southern bay retains its two cranes while the other bay only retains a gantry. The steel beams and concrete slab floor of the upper floor is supported by regularly-spaced steel uprights, and the spaces between the central steels have largely been infilled with blockwork to divide the ground floor into two areas. At the east end is an internal office area which is built of brick with metal-framed windows. The north range has open access to a north-west lean-to, while the south range has a steel staircase and a lift shaft to the upper floor which is a large open space. The roof comprises pitched steel trusses with angled struts and tie beams supported on a central row of steel uprights. The southern lean-to retains some of the electric switchgear for the incoming electricity supply for the colliery.