Exploring Kent's Past

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Monument details

Summary

Grade I listed building. Main construction periods 1785 to 1856

Summary from record TQ 76 NE 93 :

Ropery, completed 1791

Monument Types

• ROPERY (Rope Works, Post Medieval - 1540 AD to 1900 AD)
• SITE (Post Medieval - 1785 AD to 1856 AD)

Full description

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The following text is from the original listed building designation:
TQ 7568 NE CHATHAM ANCHOR WHARF
(East side) Chatham Dockyard
762-1/1/36
The Ropery and Spinning Room
24.5.71
GV I
Ropery. 1785-1791, engine house added c1836. Red brick with grey headers, stone dressings and a slate valley roof, engine house English bond brick. PLAN: single-depth rectangular plan with N engine house. EXTERIOR: 3 storeys, basement and attic; 100-window range ropery. Wider 7-window end sections separated by very long central range; cambered heads to recessed casements, cambered stone lintels to E range of basement openings, and cambered heads to dormers over alternate windows. Similar dormers to the vaUey roof. Louvred ridges. Engine house attached to N end is 2 storeys and basement; 2-window range has raised ground-floor with rubbed brick segmental-arched openings, 12/12-pane sash and steps up to a right-hand doorway, round-arched first floor 1 5/12-pane sashes, and a battered square chimney shaft.
INTERIOR: a continuous open interior has square timber posts to heavy lateral floor beams, coUar truss roof with clasped purlins and ashlar posts. Contains considerable original rope-making equipment, including a Maudslay forming machine and winches of 1811 and spinning wheel and belt drive in the attic. Engine house not inspected but reported as containing the entablature support for the beam, beam floor, bearings and fly wheel.
HISTORY: known as a double ropery for combining rope laying on the ground floor and spinning on the upper 2 floors. The form of the double rope house was modelled on that at Portsmouth, and included vaulted cellars for storing tar barrels. The building is over 1,100 feet long, rope being wound by twisting the strands together on a forming machine mounted on a wheeled carriage, which ran back down the building. This was demanding hand-powered work which was much facilitated c1836 by the installation of a Boulton and Watt beam engine to power the forming and laying machines. The attic or cock loft was used for training apprentices and the basement for storing tar.
Plymouth and Portsmouth still have ropeyards but Chatham is the only one of the original four ropeyards in Naval dockyards still in operation, and with much of its original machinery complete. This is a unique instance of outstanding importance of an industrial building of this age and scale in which the process plant is largely intact and in working order.
Built as part of the late C18 rebuilding of the S end of the dockyard, with new Rigging Store, Hatchelling house in Anchor Wharf and yarn stores in Cottage Road (qqv), and part of a fine assemblage of Georgian dockyard buildings.
(Sources: Coad J: Historic Architecture of Chatham Dockyard 1700-1850: London: 1982: 162 ; -Coad J: The Royal Dockyards 1690-1850: Aldershot: 1989: 210-221 ; MacDougall P: The Chatham
Dockyard Story: Rainham: 1987: 91 ; The Buildings of England: Newman J: West Kent and the Weald: London: 1976: 205).
Listing NGR: TQ7578268963

Description from record TQ 76 NE 93 :
(TQ 7580 6885) SAM No. 209 [Ropery: scheduled]. (1) The Ropery and Spinning Room. The Spinning room was built in 1720, the ropery was added in 1785. The building is still in use for making ropes. At almost 1/4 mile long it must be one of the longest buildings in England. It contains machinery dating back to 1811. Listed Grade II. (2) Roperies were established at Chatham in the 16th century. The ropery has been on the present site since 1618. The extant double ropery was completed by 1791 at a cost of #40-45 000. The three storey structure includes a 30 bay barrel vaulted cellar at the North end. (3)

Coad, J., 1982, Historic Architecture of Chatham Dockyard 1700-1850 (Article in serial). SWX7760.

<1> English Heritage 1:1250 SAM location maplet (OS Card Reference). SKE41612.

<2> DOE (HHR) Borough of Chatham May 1971 (7) (OS Card Reference). SKE39908.

<3> Jonathan G Coad, 1989, The royal dockyards 1690-1850: architecture and engineering works of the sailing navy. No.1, Page Nos. 207-213, Plate Nos. 161-178 (Bibliographic reference). SKE6362.

Sources and further reading

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