Tank Store And Attached Steam Fire Engine House

Tank Store and attached Steam Fire Engine House

A store for the care and maintenance of ships' water storage tanks with a later attached engine house, built in 1833 and 1892. The designer of the store was G.L. Taylor, as shown in drawing 95/06214. The engine house is documented in drawing 95/06284.

The original 1833 building is a long open shed of 23 bays, constructed with cast iron columns supporting timber trusses and beams, with a slate roof and a central valley gutter. The outer walls are formed in braced timber studs with horizontal boarding, added very soon after completion. A double hipped roof covers the building to the central valley gutter. After 1870, a continuous lean-to was added on the west side, mostly open-fronted but with enclosed bays at each end. The engine house, added in 1892, is positioned centrally at the north end and is stud framed with corrugated steel cladding and roofing on iron trusses, with gabled ends.

The south end displays black painted boarding with five small four-pane casements, a pair of doors into the lean-to, and three plank doors into the main shed. The long eastern return is also black painted, with four small lights near the left end, a central door, and two further small doors towards the right. The western return has enclosed units at each end with white painted boarding, the left unit having three paired four-pane lights and a small plank door, and the right unit having four eight-pane lights; one section is in red brick with an eight-pane light to a segmental head. Between these are open bays on timber posts, with some bays swept forward with the roof line. At the north end, the engine house has plain corrugated walls below a continuous run of paired fixed lights which return as alternating 1+3+1 paired lights with single vertical panels, above two pairs of full height plank doors with original iron hinges. A square louvred opening is set in the gable with a barge-board. To the left is a wide pair of doors to the store, and to the right a six-pane light.

Internally, the store is exactly as built, with slender cast iron posts flared at the capitals supporting a continuous valley beam at the centre and a ring-beam at the exterior, carrying king-post trusses with a continuous spacer-beam between trusses at tie level, all in lime-washed timber. The outer enclosure is formed with slender studs at approximately 600 millimetre centres, with a single cross-brace to each bay. The low-pitched roof is formed with rafters longitudinally at approximately 600 millimetre centres, plus close boarding; the inward-facing slopes have roof lights installed when the outer walls were added. There is no internal subdivision within the store. Some remnants of metal framing survive from its re-use in 1934 as a Boom Defence Depot. The floor is laid in stone slabs. The interior of the engine house was not inspected.

A cleanly designed and articulated early industrial building that has been scarcely altered since its erection. The responsibility for watering naval ships was transferred from the Dockyard to the Victualling Department in 1832, and the store had to accommodate 3,000 cast-iron tanks, which were cleaned and maintained before being transferred to vessels as needed. This is the only purpose-built tank storage unit known to survive, and forms a very significant element in the victualling yard complex, standing in context with the grand Bakery and Mill to its north. The provision of fresh water to naval vessels was a prime function of the Victualling Yards, for which large reservoirs were provided on these sites.