Former Lead and Paint Mill

This is a former lead and paint mill, built between 1817 and 1819 by Edward Holl, who was the architect for the Navy Board. It was extended in the mid-19th century and is now a museum, situated within Chatham Dockyard. The building is constructed of brick with stone dressings, a slate hipped roof, and incorporates fireproof construction with cast-iron posts, joists, and flagstone floors, topped with an iron roof.

The building has a rectangular plan, comprising offices to the north, a central paint mill, and a leadmill containing an engine house in the single-storey southern range, along with a southern extension. The exterior is two and one storeys high, with a basement, and features an eleven-window by ten-window facade. The western side includes basement windows, a plat band, a dentil brick cornice, a parapet, and a central doorway with a radial fanlight and double doors. The windows are mostly metal-framed, with 24 panes on the ground floor, with top-hung casements above and 16-pane basement windows. The northern end has blind outer windows and tall first-floor hoist doors. The ten-window southern range has sunken panels to the parapet, and a mid-19th century two-storey, four-window range with a central segmental-arched doorway, 12-light windows, and small lateral stacks. A central porch features blind upper windows on either side.

Inside, the building features cast-iron panelled doors, a fireproof frame with flanged capitals to T-section beams, and sockets for fish belly joists supporting flagstone floors. An entrance cross passage leads to stone dogleg stairs and offices to the north. The paint shop retains evidence of nine grinding mills and line shafting. An upper floor at the north end contains tall iron canvas stretching frames suspended from threaded rods. Trusses feature wrought-iron queen and prince rods and cast-iron diagonal struts and ties.

Historically, the mill was a fully integrated works, with the southern building originally housing a steam-powered lead-rolling mill and casting area, alongside a beam engine and boiler. The northern building contained paint mills connected by line shafting to the engine. Holl’s design provided capacity sufficient to supply all naval yards with paint and rolled lead. It is significant as an early and largely complete example of a specialist manufacturing building from the early 19th century, and an important early use of fireproof construction beyond the textile industry. It forms part of a group of fine Georgian dockyard buildings.