North Tower House And Attached Perimeter Wall To The South

TQ 76 NE CHATHAM COLLEGE ROAD (West side) Chatham Dockyard 762-1/8/44 North Tower House and attached perimeter wall to the south

GV II*

House. c1718, altered late C19. English bond brick with late C19 brick lateral stacks and slate pyramidal hipped roof. PLAN: single-depth. -EXTERIOR: 3 -storey; 2-window range. Street front has battered buttresses and a row of shallow rectangular recesses to the ground floor, plat band, and second-floor Lombard frieze; an inserted late C19 segmental-arched right-hand doorway with a half-glazed door with margin panes, and a low left-hand oculus, and 2 first-floor oculi. N front altered with late C 19 first-floor tripartite and single second-floor paired 6/1-pane sashes, 2 first-floor oculi to the S and W sides, with a wide W round-arched ground-floor gateway with glazed opening. Single-storey late C19 yellow brick extension attached to the N with a 6/1-pane sash. INTERIOR: not inspected. SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: attached brick perimeter wall extends (from SE corner) downhill and approx 500m to the S to the South Gate House (qv) with raised surrounds to entrances to the gardens of the Officer's Terrace (qv). Attached to SW corner is another approx 20m length of coped brick wall which extends approx 20m to south. HISTORY: part of the E perimeter wall including the South Tower House and Gatehouse (qqv), built during the early C18 expansion of the Dockyard. The wall originally surrounded the yard with towers at the corners, each with pairs of oculi to each external face and a crenellated parapet. The remaining parts of the wall demonstrate the need for the protection of the Yard, before the mid C18 construction of the Chatham Lines, and define the extent of the early C18 dockyard -one of the largest factory sites of its date in the world. (Sources: Coad J: Historic Architecture of Chatham Dockyard 1700-1850: London: 1982: 142 ; Coad J: The Royal Dockyards 1690-1850: Aldershot: 1989: 83; 1814: ADM 140/19).

Listing NGR: TQ7608369193