Number 8 Machine Shop

GILLINGHAM

TQ77SE DOCK HEAD ROAD, Chatham Dockyard 686-1/6/57 (North side) 06/06/84 No.8 Machine Shop

GV II

Dry dock cover, now machine shop, disused. c1845 by Fox Henderson & Co at Woolwich, re-erected and extended 1880. Cast-iron frame with corrugated-iron cladding and Mansard-style roof. PLAN: rectangular aisled plan and 3-bay N extension. EXTERIOR: single-storey; 15-bay range. Gabled ends with very wide gambrel roof, with 7 blocked square headed dormer-type louvres each side and ridge ventilator. Large central windows to N and S, the latter divided horizontally into 2, flanked by shallower side windows. Entrances in N and S with larger sliding boarded doors. INTERIOR: an iron frame has cast-iron I-section columns tapering at the top, connected by high level segmental-arched cast-iron braces, and with full-height cross braces to the last but one bays each end; cantilevered principals are braced each side of the columns with double tapered framed openwork struts, and trussed purlins between the frames. Northern 3 bays have trusses with plate gussets and trusses members over the aisles. HISTORY: moved to Chatham from Woolwich Dockyard after it closed in 1865. The earliest of the surviving metal-framed slip covers, and apparently closely modelled on the earlier timber covers such as that at No.3 slip, Chatham (qv). The end bays may have been added when it was moved. Part of a fine group of slip covers including the nearby boilershop (qv), moved to Chatham at the same time. The Prom (EW) factory, the third of the metal-framed buildings from Woolwich, was demolished c1990. (The Newcomen Society: Sutherland RJM: Shipbuilding & the Long-Span Roof; Paper read at Science Museum: 1989-: 14).

Listing NGR: TQ7635270029