Former Storehouse Number 2 And Former Rigging Store

Warehouse and rigging store constructed between 1793 and 1796 within the Chatham Dockyard. It is built of brick with stone dressings and has a slate hipped roof. The building has a rectangular single-depth plan, and comprises three storeys and a basement, with attics. The facade features a symmetrical arrangement with taller end and central sections, and a ground-floor plat band, cornice, and overhanging eaves; the central three-window section is set forward. The window arrangement is 3:13:5:13:3 bays. The 3-storey sections have the central three bays projecting, while hoist bays are located in the middle of the outer 5-bay sections, each with double doors and braced iron pivot hoists to the side of the top doors. The windows are 8/8-pane sashes on the ground floor and 4/8-pane sashes on the second floor, all with rubbed brick flat arches. The end returns have single round-arched hoist bays with double doors and a top 5-light lunette. A 20th-century bridge connects to Storehouse No.3 to the north, replacing an original bridge and accessing the first and second floor hoist bays. A mid-19th century extension is located at the south end of the east elevation, linking to the western wall of the ropery and featuring gauged red brick semicircular arches providing access to a throughway and with internal late 19th-century iron trusses. The interior is divided into a series of 3-bay timber frames with heavy scantling. It includes tin-lined ceilings and solid double cast-iron panelled doors between firebreak walls. The internal posts are closely spaced, with a railed route for wagons between them. The north half of the building was originally used as a Fitted Rigging House, while the south half was for storage. This warehouse is part of the longest warehouse range in Britain, and alongside Storehouse No.3 and surviving examples at Portsmouth naval dockyard, represents one of the most significant examples of industrial warehousing in Europe, predating the larger early 19th-century warehouse stacks of the London docks. Originally, there were pediments in the centre of the lower sections. Built during the extensive late 18th-century rebuilding of the dockyard, along with the north warehouse and ropery, it forms part of a fine group of Georgian naval dockyard buildings. The use of tin demonstrates an early attempt at fireproofing in industrial buildings.