Numbers 18 And 19 Stores With Linking And Attached Bollards (Buildings Numbers 1/65 And 75)

Hatchelling House and Hemp Store with Double Ropehouse and Linking Bridge, Stony Lane, HM Naval Base

This complex of naval industrial buildings comprises a hatchelling house and hemp store of 1771, a linking bridge of late 18th to early 19th century date, and a double ropehouse built 1771–75. The double ropehouse was remodelled as a storehouse in 1868 and underwent major alterations and reconstruction between 1954 and 1961. The buildings are constructed in red brick with some blue headers laid in English bond, with plain tile roofs.

The hatchelling house and hemp store (No. 19 Store) are two-storey buildings consisting of a 10 by 2-bay hatchelling house to the north and a longer 13 by 2-bay hemp store to the south. Originally free-standing, the narrow yard between them was roofed over in the early 20th century to form a single storehouse. Both ranges feature 2-light small-pane casement windows with segmental brick arches and projecting sills. The south elevation has replacement metal windows on the first floor with concrete sills and lintels, and two wide segmental-arched entrances (at bays 2 and 7) fitted with mid-20th-century folding steel doors. An eaves band runs along the building, with three late 20th-century roof-lights at the left end. A two-storey, three-bay bridge linking the store and ropehouse is located at the right end, partly blocking a ground-floor window. The bridge has a plinth with offsets and features a round central archway flanked by slightly lower segmental archways, each with ashlar imposts and lunettes above having radial glazing bars and stone sills (the central lunette on the west side and the lunette at the south end on the east side are bricked up). The bridge has stepped eaves.

The former ropehouse is an exceptionally long range measuring 1,095 feet, comprising three storeys and an attic with 109 bays, almost symmetrical except for one extra bay in the western section. The six bays at each end form projecting end blocks on each side. The building has a stepped plinth and mid-20th-century metal windows with concrete sills and original segmental brick arches (replaced by soldier-brick arches on the second floor). Large mid-20th-century loading entrances with folding steel doors have been inserted at each gable end and along the long sides. Boxed eaves run the full length, and mid-20th-century brick fire walls rise through the flat-topped mansard roof with hipped, glazed roof lights. At the east end, the corners are canted on the ground floor, with the upper floors carried on large stone corbels.

At the centre of the range, a throughway was cut in the mid-19th century when the building became a store. This features a carriage arch flanked by pedestrian arches, all round-arched with linking stone imposts. The central arch is carved with a fouled anchor keystone on the north side. At the base on each side are two bollards imitating upended cannon barrels with cannon balls in muzzles. Flanking the throughway are wide round archways with imposts and keystones, now bricked up with doors. A further bollard comprising an upended cannon barrel (dated either 17th or 16th century, with blocked muzzle) stands at the south-west corner of the building.

The ropery interior was gutted in the mid-20th century and has replacement steel-framed internal structure and roof trusses. The hatchelling house and hemp store retain 18th-century internal features unique among stores in this part of the dockyard. Each building contains chamfered, square timber posts on padstones supporting large-scantling wooden cross-beams (a single row of posts in the south range and three rows in the north range). Roof trusses of large-scantling timbers have tie-beams and collared queen posts supporting down-braced king posts; trusses in the south range have been cut through and altered. The ground floor of the north range features a series of small, numbered brass plates for measuring purposes. At the east end is a trap door to the first floor, and in the north-east corner stands the original wooden winder stair with broad shallow treads, plain handrail on wooden posts, board-lined walls, and a hinged shutter to the ground-floor stair window.

Historically, the hatchelling house was where hemp was straightened, or hatchelled, by being pulled across boards studded with iron spikes. The hemp was then carried across the bridge to the ropehouse where it was made into hemp strings. After tarring, these were spun into rope. This was the first naval double ropehouse, with the spinning house on the ground floor, the laying house on the first and second floors, and the lofts used by apprentice ropemakers. The building is the sixth great ropehouse to stand on the site since 1665. The 1760 plan for the dockyard proposed moving the ropeyard to the north end, but fires destroyed earlier structures in 1760 and 1770 before the land could be reclaimed, and the new ropery had to be rebuilt on the old site. The building was gutted by arson in 1776 and rebuilt internally. Though much altered since ropemaking ceased in the mid-19th century, the ropery retains historical importance as the first naval double ropery and served as the model for the more complete example at Chatham. Together with the hatchelling house, it forms part of one of the largest integrated groups of 18th-century industrial buildings in the country.