Sail Loft

A sail loft, constructed around 1723 and altered in the 19th century, is located within Chatham Dockyard. It is a rendered brick building with lateral stacks and a hipped, shallow mansard roof covered in slates. The building has a rectangular plan with a southern stair and offices.

The exterior is a long, symmetrical range with projecting end and central three-bay sections, and a stepped frieze to overhanging eaves. It rises three storeys and has an attic. The windows have segmental arched heads and arched label moulds, containing 616-pane sashes with early 18th-century glazing bars. The lower floors of the ends and central sections of the range have wider windows with tripartite sashes. The rear elevation is similar. The three-window southern end has steps leading to a centrally positioned segmental-arched doorway on the first floor, with half-glazed double doors, and windows matching the front elevation.

The interior incorporates former ships' timbers from a 17th-century ship as ground-floor posts, reflecting Navy Board instructions to reuse old timbers. The first floor features 19th-century Y-shaped side braces added to the main beams, which are cogged, re-used timbers. The open second floor is reinforced with timber posts extending upwards to the roof, which is supported by early 18th-century queen post collar trusses and sections of a ridge lantern. The southern end contains offices with flush four-panel doors on either side of a central stair leading from the end doorway. A settle is located on the second-floor landing, and a lateral stair provides access to the attic.

Historically, the building was planned as part of a courtyard with rear wings and a crenellated parapet, similar in style to the nearby Officer's Terrace. It was used for sail making on the upper floor and sail and flag storage below, the internal frame providing an early example of an uninterrupted workspace. It is the oldest surviving sail loft in a Royal dockyard and a rare, relatively unaltered, industrial building of its date.

The building, alongside the nearby Officers' Terrace and Commissioner's House, forms part of the early 18th-century rebuilding of the dockyard, contributing to a fine group of Georgian naval dockyard buildings.