Chatham Dock Pumping Station South

This is a two-story dock pumping station, built circa 1816-1823, designed by John Rennie Snr, with a late 19th-century extension. It is constructed of yellow stock brick with Portland stone dressings and a slate hipped roof, exhibiting a late Georgian style.

The plan consists of a central boiler house with an enclosed east chimney and engine houses on either side. The symmetrical front elevation has a five-window range, with the central three windows projecting forward. It features a plat band, cornice, and blocking course. The round-arched ground-floor windows are set in matching recesses with impost bands, containing 12-pane sashes. First-floor windows are flat-headed metal-framed casements, and a flat-headed central entrance has been inserted. The matching rear elevation has a blind central first-floor window beneath a square, battered, panelled chimney, separated from a short panelled base by an ashlar band. A cast-iron pressure vessel stands in front of the south engine house. A late 19th-century single-story range to the front left has brick infill below continuous upper glazing, and a corrugated iron gable and roof.

Inside the central boiler house, a late 19th-century gantry crane is present. The south engine house, with a well at the west end, retains a beam floor and entablature, comprising moulded cast-iron beams supported by paired round cast-iron columns. A cantilevered stone winder stair leads to the beam floor, which features hand cranks at either end of the engine beam slot and lifting hooks in the ceiling, with four iron columns at the corners. The metal roof has wrought-iron ties and cast-iron tie beams and principals. Cast-iron panelled doors are among the fittings.

The station was built by Rennie to drain dry dock No.1 (now No.3), the first stone dry dock at Chatham. Its design is similar to his engine house at Sheerness (demolished) and is illustrated in his Treatise on Docks. This is the oldest dock pumping station, and, apart from the New River Head pumping station, the earliest surviving purpose-built pumping station in the country. It is also one of the oldest engine houses built for a Boulton and Watt engine.

Historically, the station represents significant archaeological evidence of its working and forms part of a fine assemblage of Georgian naval docks and dockyard buildings.