Gunboat Yard Engine House Complex

An engine house, boiler house, horse wheel house, coal store, chimney, and former well houses, c1854.

ARCHITECT: the design of the engine house complex is presumed to have been undertaken by the Admiralty Works Department, which was under the control of Colonel Greene, the Director of Works and William Scamp, the Deputy Director of Engineering and Architectural Works.

MATERIALS: the buildings are red brick, mostly laid in Flemish bond. The engine house has a wrought iron roof structure, and the group has corrugated iron and slate roofs.

PLAN: the buildings stand within the Haslar Gunboat Yard in a line along its south-eastern boundary wall, on the opposite side of the road to the Royal Naval Hospital Laundry (NHLE ref 1424209). The complex is separated from the main gunboat yard by walls adjoining the rear of the gunboat sheds, creating a forecourt into which the main entrance from Haslar Road opens.

The engine house and boiler house, horse wheel house and coal store have an L-shaped footprint, with a chimney rising at their junction, from the boiler house. A well-house is built upon the north-east end, and a second, newer well-house on the south-west.

EXTERIOR: the engine house, boiler house, horse wheel house and coal store is a single-storey range with a brick parapet. Its south-eastern elevation forms part of the boundary wall of the gunboat yard, and is a roughly symmetrical composition with two tall arched doorways to either side, with three smaller arches in between. The left-most arch is an entrance to former coal store; all others are blind. A window with a flat concrete lintel has been inserted to light the boiler room. Most original openings throughout the building are beneath gauged brick round-arches, and a brick string course runs the length of the building above the height of these windows, indicating the base of the parapet.

Within the engine house complex forecourt, the main entrance to the engine house is on the north-west elevation, and to the west are two full-height round arched windows; the door retains a fanlight with radial glazing bars, and the windows retain multiple-light casements. The north-west elevation of the boiler house has a pair of windows, and an inserted doorway beneath a thick concrete lintel, and an oculus and inserted arched opening. The western wall of the complex extends north to the rear of the gunboat sheds, segregating this section of yard.

The chimney is square in plan and has projecting courses of brick at its head. A platform reached by two steps stands at the junction between the chimney, boiler house and engine house.