Joiners Shop

TQ 76 NE CHATHAM EAST ROAD (Northwest side) Chatham Dockyard 762-1/8/54 Joiner's Shop

GV II*

joiner's shop. 1840-60, E side filled in mid-late C19. English bond brick with stone dressings and a slate, corrugated asbestos and iron hipped roof. PLAN: rectangular plan formerly around an open courtyard, with a W extension. EXTERIOR: 2 storey; 13-window range. Symmetrical E front has 3-bay ends set forward, plat band and cornice and parapet, central C20 sliding doors, rubbed brick segmental-arches to 6/6-pane metal casements with doorways in the second and tenth bays from the left, and a long central first-floor metal window with thin iron mullions. 8-window sides with doorways on the S side one bay in; windows as the front. A 2-aisle extension to the W with segmental-arched 8/8-pane windows, has gable ends, possibly rebuilt, of those to the $, the outer range with a central doorway with windows each side and a later large round-arched window over the door, the inner range with 3 windows; N gables with similar fenestration, W side has 9-window range including a doorway 3 from the right with a lunette to the left. INTERIOR: Former courtyard defined by brick walls to three sides with segmental-arched windows, open on E side. Cast-iron posts with joists set in shoes cast onto fish-belly profile ground-floor beams; the inner, former courtyard area, has timber beams to inserted floor. The roof construction to the first floor is clearly of a later phase to the courtyard and east-facing workshop area, with stone flags to fireproof NE corner. Cast-iron H-section columns on first floor, with a slight batter, cast in Rochester, to a wrought-iron roof with cast-iron decorative compression members. The wide stone stair flight from the entrance supported on special cast iron beams, a pair of columns and a bridging beam with parabolic bottom flange. Long first-floor window has cast iron octagonal mullions on the inside. HISTORY: This is a unique purpose-built workshop, the plan and constructional details of which are directly related to its function in preparing shipbuilding timber. Forms a central part of the complete naval dockyard.

Listing NGR: TQ7599269249