Former Ordnance Store At Chatham Gun Wharf

Former Ordnance Store at Chatham Gun Wharf

This is a Grade II listed building, originally constructed in 1805 as an ordnance store at Chatham Gun Wharf. It incorporates a carpenter's shop and was used as an RAF Association club at the time of inspection in 2004.

The building is constructed of yellow brick in Flemish bond with shallow pitch hipped slate roofs topped by two ridge stacks. It comprises a single storey range positioned parallel to the River Medway.

The exterior features on the east elevation (painted) include a slightly advanced central wide coped gable with a tall arched opening. This arch is flanked by two 15 by 15-pane sashes without horns, set under gauged brick flat arches. Long wings extend from each side, each containing three 15 by 15-pane sashes under lintels, followed by a door and then another three bays of similar windows. The west elevation (not painted) follows a similar arrangement, though the central arch contains twentieth-century brick infilling that remains readable. Minor twentieth-century additions are present, including a single storey flat-roofed extension to the centre of the north wing where an external door formerly existed, an additional twentieth-century door to the left of this extension, and inserted high windows to the left of the gable. Most of the original sashes survive throughout both elevations.

At the southern end, the building abuts the late nineteenth-century former Blacksmith's shop. The northern end features a small former boat house, rendered and connected by a narrow flat-roofed link.

The interior of the north wing contains late nineteenth-century inserted chamfered posts with T-shaped capitals supporting tie beams. Both sides have twentieth-century internal partitions. The original roof structure comprises joggled king-post trusses with raking struts, common rafters showing evidence of whitewash, a ridge board, and single purlins. The central gabled range has exposed timber roof structure and a twentieth-century inserted chimney; both internal wing elevations feature tall rounded arches matching the exterior design. The southern wing elevation has a door with a 6-pane overlight and a 6 by 6-pane sash, under a boarded door to the attic. The northern wing elevation has a 12 by 12-pane sash and a later door with infilled brickwork.

Built in 1805 under the supervision of Lieutenant Colonel D'Arcy at a cost of £1,477 16 shillings 10 and one quarter pence, this store received and issued all kinds of ordnance for naval ships, including cannon balls, muskets, gun carriages, and clothing. The Chatham Gun Wharf occupied the site of medieval wharves below the medieval church and the location of the first Royal Dockyard established in the sixteenth century. When the dockyard relocated northward in the seventeenth century to a larger site (present-day Chatham Dockyard), the Board of Ordnance appropriated this land for use as the Gun Wharf, combining arsenal and dock functions.

By 1851, the northern wing was used for binding of carriages while the southern end functioned as a carpenters and wheelers shop. In 1863, the northern end served as a store house with the southern end continuing as a carpenter's shop. Later nineteenth-century records describe the building as an armoury for storage and repair of small arms. The northern wing remained in use as an armoury until the 1950s when the site was decommissioned. In the late twentieth century, it was used as a martial arts centre and RAF Association club.

The building holds strong associations with 1805, a critical period in British naval history when infrastructure established in the dockyards following Anson's reforms from the 1760s was extensively tested. The Gun Wharves played crucial roles in naval operations, from supplying the Peninsula campaigns at Plymouth to supporting blockades of French and occupied ports from Portsmouth and Chatham.

The building has group value with the Grade II Command House, the Grade II Church of St Mary, and the Chatham Lines (a Scheduled Monument), and maintains a strong relationship with the buildings of Chatham Dockyard to the north. It is listed as a remarkably well-surviving 1805 ordnance building that forms an integral component of this historically important site.