Description

TQ 76 NE CHATHAM CHURCH LANE
(East side) Chatham Dockyard
762-1/8/38
Nos. 1-12 (Consecutive)
24.05.1971 Former Officers' Terrace and
attached front area walls and
overthrows

GV I

Terrace of 12 houses. 1722-1731. Brick with stucco basement, stone dressings, party wall stacks and slate hipped roof. PLAN: double-depth plan, with rear service wings enclosing flagged yards. Built on a slope, with basement offices entered from the front, and family and staff access from the rear.
EXTERIOR: each of 3 storeys, basement and attic; 4-window range, 3-window range houses set back. A symmetrical terrace, with end and central pairs of houses set forward and slightly raised, clasping pilasters and divided by paired pilasters to round-arched gablets, plat band and cornice, and crenellated parapet with gabled merlons.
Timber Doric porches have clasping pilasters to a triglyph frieze and modillion cornice, 6-panel doors with flush panels, and 6-pane side windows; placed asymmetrically to each house, the middle pair set back 1 bay from the centre, the outer ones 1 bay from the outer bays, and the intervening sections in the inner bays. Segmental-arched windows have late C19 2-light horned sashes.
Rear mews range of rendered 2-storey blocks connected by single-storey entrance blocks containing round-arched doorways with fluted stone fanlights, ground-floor windows with labels, and segmental-arched first-floor windows. Good dated lead hoppers and downpipes set in re-entrants.
INTERIOR: varied interiors: No.6 has a basement room with good curved corner double doors to a fine open well stair with column-on-vase balusters, fluted column newels and ramped, wreathed rails. Recessed houses have plain stairs from the front entrance with turned balusters. Wainscotting and dado, reeded cornices, plain fire surrounds; continuous attic along the terrace. SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: attached front walls enclosing front area, with 2 wrought-iron overthrow arches with lamps to front steps down to Medway Gardens.
HISTORY: probably designed in-house by the Navy Board, each house was allotted to an officer of the Dockyard, who conducted his business from the basement; the porch is reported to have been used by sedan chair porters to transport the officer round the Dockyard. Each has a rear enclosed garden and stabling forming a parallel terrace (qv). The most ambitious of the post 1716 development on the hillside to the N of the yard, and with the sail loft, enclosing wall, gateway and lodges (qqv), in the manner associated with the Ordnance Board at the Arsenal, Berwick-on- Tweed, Devonport and elsewhere at this time.
As a unified palace front, one of the most advanced terrace designs for its date outside London, and the finest surviving in a Navy yard, the 1690 terrace at Plymouth having been partially destroyed by bombing c1941.
Each house has an enclosed garden and store across the rear access lane, ( qv). (Sources: Barker N: English Architecture Public and Private: London: 1993: 199-230 ; Coad J: Historic Architecture of Chatham Dockyard 1700-1850: London: 1982: 142 ; MacDougall P: The Chatham Dockyard Story: Rainham: 1987: 59; The Buildings of England: Newman J: West Kent and the Weald: London: 1976: 205).

Listing NGR: TQ7595469103

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q17533407

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

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