Exploring Kent's Past

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Monument details

Summary

Grade II* listed building. Main construction periods 1729 to 1866

Summary from record TQ 76 NE 94 :

Ropery offices, former hemp house, built 1728

Monument Types

• HEMP MILL (HEMP MILL, Post Medieval - 1540 AD to 1900 AD)
• SITE (Post Medieval - 1729 AD to 1866 AD)

Full description

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The following text is from the original listed building designation:
TQ 7568 NE CHATHAM COTTAGE ROAD
(West side) Chatham Dockyard
762-1/1/46
Former Hemp House, Spinning
Room and Offices
GV II*
Hemp store, spinning house, and offices. 1729 single-storey hemp house, doubled in width 1743-47, extended to S and first floor added 1812, mid C19 engine house. Brick with slate hipped roof.
PLAN: rectangular single-depth plan, with N attached engine house and office. EXTERIOR: 2 storeys and cellar; 21:2:1-bay range. Long hemp house has overhanging eaves, divided into three first-floor 3:1:3-window sections with the middle ones flanked by shallow buttresses and containing wide round-arched ground-floor doorways and altered C20 first-floor windows; single ground-floor windows, altered, segmental-arched first-floor 12/12-pane casements. N engine house is patterned brick with a 4-bay end with blank outer bays, 2-storey flat-headed recesses containing round-arched 24/24-pane casements.
Early C19 lower, narrower 5-bay office against the N end comprises a 4-window range with overhanging eaves, has a central timber porch, and rubbed brick heads to 6/6-pane sashes.
INTERIOR: has a fire-proof cellar, match boarded ground-floor store with posts and masonry walls with round arches supporting the upper floor, timber queen and prince post roof trusses with attached belt drive for the spinning plant. The former engine house has tall cast-iron columns to the beam floor.
HISTORY: the 1729 Hemp house was the only part of the old dockyard to survive the late C18 rebuilding of the ropeyard in the S end of the dockyard, and was used for storing raw hemp before ft was taken to the hatchelling house for combing. When mechanised spinning was added mid C19 it was put into the upper floor, and the beam engine in an extension on the N end.
Part of the most complete ropery (see Anchor Wharf) and one of the largest integrated groups of C18 industrial buildings in the country; also part of a fine and complete group 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: 207 -8 ; The Buildings of England: Newman J: West Kent and the Weald: London: 1976: 205).
Listing NGR: TQ7583668956

Description from record TQ 76 NE 94 :
(TQ 7584 6895) SAM No. 211 [Former hemp house: scheduled]. (1) The Ropery and Spinning Room. Listed Grade II. The Spinning Room was built in 1720. (2) The oldest building in the rope yard built as a hemp house on the site of officers gardens in 1728. Doubled in width in the 1740s. Extended south in the late 18th century. Additional floor added in 1812. (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. 207-8, Plate Nos. 158-60 (Bibliographic reference). SKE6362.

Sources and further reading

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