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Latitude: 51.3924 / 51°23'32"N
Longitude: 0.526 / 0°31'33"E
OS Eastings: 575839
OS Northings: 168955
OS Grid: TQ758689
Mapcode National: GBR PPP.MTL
Mapcode Global: VHJLV.28FF
Plus Code: 9F329GRG+XC
Entry Name: Former Hemp House, Spinning Room and Offices
Listing Date: 13 August 1999
Grade: II*
Source: Historic England
Source ID: 1378608
English Heritage Legacy ID: 476561
ID on this website: 101378608
Location: Brompton, Medway, Kent, ME4
County: Medway
Electoral Ward/Division: River
Parish: Non Civil Parish
Built-Up Area: Chatham
Traditional County: Kent
Lieutenancy Area (Ceremonial County): Kent
Church of England Parish: Gillingham St Mark
Church of England Diocese: Rochester
Tagged with: Architectural structure
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
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