Number 1 Smithery

Number 1 Smithery

Smithery, now disused. Built 1805-08 by Edward Holl, architect to the Navy Board. Foundry, engine and boiler houses were added in the 1840s and 1860s, with a foundry constructed in the 1850s-60s. The original courtyard was roofed over for a steam hammer shop in 1865. The roof of the original ranges was replaced and raised with end gables in 1888, and the main entrance was added in 1890. The building has been disused since 1975.

The structure is constructed of brick with corrugated asbestos cladding and a slate hipped roof with metal roof trusses.

The plan consists of an original courtyard arrangement of three single-depth ranges, partly enclosed by Master's and foreman's offices positioned either side of the entrance. An NE engine and boiler house was added in 1841-42, further boiler houses beyond it in 1865-69, a smithery extension in 1867 linking to an iron foundry to the north (constructed 1855-61), and another smithery extension in 1869 between the foundry and boiler houses.

The west entrance elevation features two five-window gables with tall round-arched ground-floor windows and a further round-arched window in the centre beneath clerestory ventilators, flanked by sunken panels. On either side are lower two-storey, two-window lodges with slate hipped roofs and 6/6-pane sashes, connected by large double courtyard gates. The east elevation displays three similar five-bay gables with dentil cornice and dentil coping, fitted with round-arched metal-framed windows with tilting casements, stepped recesses and a central louvred oculus. The 13-window south side has similar windows. The north extension on the west side contains a 1860s range of five and three windows with an inner gable, oculus and altered ground floor, some round-arched ground-floor windows and segmental-arched openings above. The north end is partly demolished. On the east side, a pair of coped gables above the former engine and boiler houses feature round-arched openings with red brick arches and lunettes in the gables, with a three-arch single-storey range to the north displaying an arcade of round arches, partly infilled. A battered square chimney stands against the original section.

The interior contains iron roof trusses and some remaining early 20th-century pivoting hoists attached to the outer walls. Plant includes 20th-century cupola furnaces. Some sections of original walls were dismantled to allow extension of the works. The lodges were not inspected.

The building was designed by Holl working from Inspector General Samuel Bentham's office. The original design comprised three single-storey ranges with lunettes over the lower windows and clerestory ridges. It was fitted out under the advice of Sir John Rennie, with 40 separate forges with bellows arranged around the walls, each with a hoist. A beam engine was installed in 1841 for hammers and fans to replace the bellows, with a second added in 1842. The 1861 extensions were constructed in connection with the building of HMS Achilles at Chatham, the first ironclad warship built in a naval yard.

Although in poor condition, the smithery preserves its original layout together with later additions, and contains considerable equipment from the later period of shipbuilding. It was an important part of the working dockyard, increasingly so as metal components replaced wooden ones from the early 19th century and during the mid-19th century transition to all-metal ships. It is one of three early 19th-century dockyard smitheries, alongside Bentham's at Devonport and Rennie's 1815 iron-framed smithery at Woolwich (now re-erected at Ironbridge Museum), and forms a central part of a complete Georgian dockyard.