Chatham Dock Pumping Station South

TQ 76 NE 762-1/8/60

CHATHAM Chatham Dockyard MAIN GATE ROAD (east side) Chatham Dock Pumping Station South

GV II* Dock pumping station, now disused. c1816-23, by John Rennie Snr, late C19 extension. Yellow stock bricks with Portland stone dressings and a slate hipped roof. Late Georgian style.

PLAN: central boiler house with enclosed east chimney and engine houses each side. Two storeys; five-window range.

EXTERIOR: symmetrical front with the middle three windows set forward, plat band, cornice and blocking course. Round-arched ground-floor windows set in matching recesses with impost bands have 12112-pane sashes, flat-headed first floor metal framed casement windows, with an inserted flat-headed central entrance. Matching rear elevation has a blind central first-floor window beneath a square battered panelled chimney separated by an ashlar band from a short panelled base. A cast-iron pressure vessel stands in front of the south engine house. Late C19 single-storey range to the left front has brick infill below continuous upper glazing and corrugated iron gable and roof.

INTERIOR: central boiler house with late C19 gantry crane; south engine house, with the well at the west end, retains the beam floor and entablature, consisting of moulded cast-iron beams supported by a pair of round cast-iron columns; a cantilevered stone winder stair to the side of the chimney leads to the beam floor, which has hand cranks at either end of the slot for the engine beam and lifting hooks in the ceiling, with four iron columns at the corners; metal roof has wrought-iron ties and cast-iron tie beams and principals. Fittings included cast-iron panelled doors.

HISTORY: built by Rennie to drain his No.1 -now No.3 -dry dock (qv), the first stone dry dock at Chatham. The design is similar to his engine house at Sheerness (demolished) and 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.

A very early steam pumping station retaining considerable archaeological evidence for its working, and part of a fine assemblage of Georgian naval docks and dockyard buildings.

Listing NGR: TQ7606869399