Archway House Building Number 23

Archway House, Building Number 23

Sawyers' and carpenters' shop and stores, now offices, built 1824–30 at Sheerness Dockyard. Probably designed by Edward Holl, architect to the Navy Board, and carried out by William Miller, architect, and Sir John Rennie Junior and George Rennie, engineers.

The building is constructed in yellow stock brick with granite dressings, features a cast-iron internal frame, and is topped with a slate hipped mansard roof. The plan comprises five single-depth sections, with three ground-floor sections containing saw pits that alternate with timber seasoning stores, separated by stair wells.

The exterior displays two storeys and an attic. Five window sections are separated by recessed stair bays with raised fire-break walls. Rusticated granite piers support a full-length round-arched arcade with rubbed brick heads, a plant band, thin cornice, and parapet. Late 19th-century or mid-20th-century glazing infills the formerly open arcade. Round-arched doorways are set in matching recesses to the stair bays, with rubbed brick heads to the first-floor 8-over-8-pane sashes. Flat-headed dormers with 6-over-6-pane sashes, some of iron, project from each bay. The three-window returns contain small round-arched ground-floor windows within larger arched recesses, and a large central round-arched hoist bay at first-floor level. Blocks 2, 3, and 4 originally had larger loading doors to the central first-floor bay.

The interior contains a cast-iron frame of posts to which T-section beams with arched webs are slotted, with sockets in the sides for fish belly joists bearing flagstone floors. The timber seasoning bays numbered 2 and 4 have sockets cast at three levels into the columns for carrying seasoning racks. The first floor is similarly constructed, though the northern end (the mould loft) is without columns. The attic features a cast-iron roof; blocks 2 and 5 have canted tie beams with pierced webs and axial arched beams between iron posts, whilst the other bays have queen rods to I-section ties and rafters. Original cantilevered stone open-well stairs with iron stick balusters survive on the west side. Cast-iron harr-hung 6-panel doors remain, with one example surviving at the south end.

The fire-proof frame is related to similar structures in Holl's lead works at Chatham and ropery at Devonport, and to Rennie's work at the Royal William Yard, Devonport, forming part of a rigorous attempt to reduce fire hazard. The building originally contained 15 saw pits in blocks 1, 3, and 5, with seasoning stores and a mould loft, stores, and carpenters' shop on the upper floor, plus attic stores. The hand saw pits were among the last built for the Navy before the changeover to metal ships, and were replaced by the steam saw mill from 1856 onwards, with which this building forms an interesting comparison as a fire-proof iron-framed structure for sawing. It is of considerable interest as an integrated timber workshop with a fire-proof frame within the elder Rennie's plan for the completely rebuilt yard, and forms a central part of a unique planned early 19th-century dockyard.