Hulkes Lane Brewery Buildings, Chatham, Medway

Summary

Former brewery with phases from the C18, probably earlier, to the late C19.

Description

Former brewery, the product of piecemeal rebuilding and extension from the C18, possibly earlier, through to the end of the C19.

MATERIALS: predominantly brick, yellow and red of different phases; some structural timber-framing and ironwork. Roofs are mainly clay tile, with some corrugated sheet material. Doors are timber, windows are a mix of timber and iron.

PLAN: the complex is situated to the immediate rear of 351 High Street, the mansion house associated with the brewery. The various parts of the complex are accessed from Hulkes Lane, which runs north/south between the High Street to the south and the river Medway to the north. There is a notable fall in land levels from the High Street to the river’s edge, but also variety in floor and basement levels between the various built elements of the site.

The northernmost part of the complex is the building added by Arkcoll in around 1880 and known by its later function as the bonded warehouse. This is roughly square in plan, faces onto Hulkes Lane and has two storeys over a semi-basement level.

Hard between the rear of the mansion and the side of the bonded warehouse is an amalgam of structures built against each other. At the centre of this, entirely enclosed by later structures, is the earliest building of the brewery complex, the malt store. The building stands at a slight north-east/south-west skew in relation the plot. It is square in plan, formed of two parallel ranges divided by a spine wall under pitched roofs. Each range is partially open to the underside of the roof, with central walkways overhead.

To the south-west of the malt store is the tun room, originally seeming to be a detached building and possibly dating to the late C18. It has two storeys and two parallel hipped roofs running east to west. The northernmost of the two roofs is met by the north/south pitched roof of the adjoining ale store, a slightly wedge-shaped range to the immediate west of the malt store. The ale store is later than the tun room but probably not significantly so.

To the east of the malt store is the 1837 brewery. This is another slightly wedge-shaped range; tall, with four storeys and a pitched roof running north/south with a squat, tower-like element to the north. To the south of the 1837 brewery is the late-C19 Lion Brewery office, which has a single storey, plus basement. The roof is pitched behind a partial parapet.

To the south of the malt store, between the tun room to the west and brewery office to the east, is the cooperage. This is a two-storey building with no external walls, infilling what was an open space between the earlier structures and spanned by a wide pitched roof with large opposing dormers either side of the north/south ridge. Its first floor is supported from below by iron columns.

To the north of the malt store is the hoist room. This is a small wedge-shaped range with two storeys over what would have been an open loading bay at ground floor, now enclosed to form a ground-floor room. Its roof is pitched, running east/west, with a ridge lantern at the west end.

EXTERIORS AND INTERIORS: some of the structures are enclosed on all sides so are visible externally only from above. All structures show evidence of phased change internally and externally, so detailed study and recording will reveal more about the evolution of the site, changing functions and brewing processes. A number are known to have, or are very likely to have, replaced earlier buildings on the site, making it possible that there is fragmentary survival of earlier fabric incorporated into substantively later phases. Both outside and inside there are instances of sign writing, on or over doors and on walls. These may relate to both brewery and subsequent uses. The following descriptions move from south to north along Hulkes Lane, then to Ship Lane, and then to those parts which have no visible exteriors at street level.

THE BREWERY OFFICE is a small, single-storey, late-C19 corner building which partially overlaps the rear wing of the mansion. To the south (towards the High Street) and around the corner entrance, it has a parapet and is stuccoed, with moulded and incised decoration around the windows; over the entrance is the name ‘LION BREWERY’. Just beyond the corner entrance, to the north, was the gateway into the brewery site. Beyond the site of the gate the building’s east-facing elevation is plain painted brick. Windows are tall sashes.

THE 1837 BREWERY is a tall yellow brick building with painted ground floor. The east elevation has a parapet and blind arcading dividing it into five bays by giant pilasters. Fenestration is irregular, with windows showing evidence of being secondary insertions, and brickwork indicating the infilling of earlier openings. The interior has been substantially rebuilt.

THE HOIST ROOM is gable-fronted and is a single-bay wide. The yellow brickwork appears contiguous with the neighbouring bonded warehouse. There is a single window at first and second floor with red brick segmental and arched heads respectively, and an oculus in the gable. The upper floors of the elevation are supported on a steel lintel. The ground floor has been enclosed by a later recessed brick wall. The floors are unsubdivided internally and connect through to the malt store to the south. The second floor has overhead steelwork and elements relating to a hoist mechanism.

THE BONDED WAREHOUSE is of yellow brick with red brick dressings. It has two storeys over a lower-ground floor and is formed of two parallel ranges, each under a wide pitched roof with gable end facing onto Hulkes Lane; the roof to the north drops down to a catslide. Windows are iron-framed under red brick segmental or arched heads with oculi in the gables. The central two bays of the south range project forward, possibly originally a stair tower, now housing a goods lift; the window openings have been bricked up. The building’s ground floor is slightly raised and is accessed from a deck on brick piers, sheltered by a simple wooden veranda. This is a later arrangement but must have replaced an earlier alternative given the height of the main entrance. The rear elevation faces onto Ship Lane; this is very plain with some blocked and some inserted window openings. Internally, the ground and first floors are jack-arched, supported on iron columns; internal subdivision is later. There is an enclosed timber stair in the south-east corner.

THE ALE STORE AND TUN ROOM are visible externally only from Ship Lane, which runs parallel to Hulkes Lane to the west. They are of red brick with a dentillated eaves course. There are areas of both Flemish and English bond in the brickwork and evidence of patching and alteration; the elevations are largely blind. The upper floor of the tun room is spanned by a full-height A-frame truss. It is unclear whether this is a reinforcement or the remains of an internal structure relating to an historic use. The floor appears to be a later insertion, supported by steel joists borne on inserted brick piers. There are various blocked and/or redundant openings in the walls; the ground floor appears be the result of later excavation.

The ale store is enclosed at its south end by the original external north wall of the Tun Room. Its east wall above ground level is the timber framed wall of the malt store. The floor is carried on timber beams with iron supports against the walls, suggesting that it is secondary. There are blocked openings to north and south. the ground floor appears be the result of later excavation.

THE COOPERAGE dates from the late C19 and occupies an area that was previously partly open. It has two levels, the lower of which is unlit, and may have been partly excavated to achieve the current floor level. The floor above is supported by cast iron columns and brick piers that stand within the enclosing walls, which belong to the adjoining buildings. There is a timber King-post roof, with large dormers to east and west.

THE MALT STORE comprises two parallel two-storey ranges. The upper storey is timber-framed (in softwood), the lower level of brick. Some timber-framed elements, such as the north and part of the south walls, have been replaced by the brickwork of later additions, and some of the timberwork elsewhere is later. Three storage chambers (or bins) survive substantially intact, lined with painted boarding of various types and with zinc linings to the ceilings and between the floorboards for protection from vermin. Narrow timber walkways in the roof spaces are presumed to have allowed the chambers to be filled from above. There are small openings at low level and in the doors presumably for accessing the contents, although it has also been suggested that the latter might be for cats. The northern end of the block has been altered; there is a timber stair and it has been partially ceiled-over.

History

The Hulkes Lane brewery buildings are a group of tightly-packed, adjoining and interconnected structures, the product of piecemeal rebuilding and extension of an urban brewery from at least the C18 through to the end of the C19. Brewing ceased on the site in 1912. The complex is situated immediately behind the C18 brewer’s mansion, 351 High Street (Grade II*), which faces onto the north side of Rochester High Street. The site is reached from Hulkes Lane, a narrow north/south thoroughfare which runs along the side of the mansion and connects the High Street to the south, with the south bank of the River Medway to the north, once the site of the brewery’s wharf. The southern part of Hulkes Lane, closest to the High Street, retains a particularly well-preserved surface of square setts with a granite cart way. Setts may survive beneath later tarmac on the northern part of the lane.

Brewing was taking place in Chatham Intra by the C17. It is not known when brewing first began on this site, but development of the land was probably underway by the 1630s and the nearby spring across the High Street to the south would have made it a good location for a brewery. As with much land in Chatham Intra, the site was owned by St Bartholomew’s Hospital, founded in the C11, and by the early C18 it was leased to brewer, John Tihurst (or Ticehurst, or Tyhurst), and subsequently his son-in-law, Isaac Wildash (or Wildish). In 1778 Wildash was granted a lease for the ‘mansion house and garden in his own occupation’, along with a ‘commodious wharf’ and ‘large brewhouse… supplied by a spring rising in the meadow land …’ (Kendall, p 57).

The garden of the mansion house was on the opposite side of the High Street (retaining walls and railings listed at Grade II) and was the location of the spring. An early-C19 Gothick building (Grade II) on the site of the spring is referred to in sales particulars of 1912 as a water tower, and replaced an earlier well house referred to in late-C18 inventories. A lease of 1778 gives Wildash as tenant of two public houses, one of which being The Ship Inn (Grade II and previously known as The Roebuck), situated to the immediate west of the mansion house.

Following a brief partnership between John Wildash (son of Isaac) and Thomas Hulkes, by the end of the C18 the house, brewery and public houses were in the sole ownership of Hulkes. Hulkes died in 1805 and the brewery was inherited by consecutive heirs, the last of which, James Hulkes, ran the business until 1877 with his long-term manager, Henry Coulter. In 1877 Hulkes sold the brewery, mansion and wharf to Charles Arkcoll and Co, who renamed it the Lion Brewery. Arkcoll died in 1912 and the brewery ended up in the ownership Style and Winch, a Maidstone-based brewery. However, the interest of Style and Winch was in acquiring the tied houses, not additional brewing capacity so the Lion Brewery was then closed. After a period of various commercial and residential uses the house and brewery was leased by the furniture removal business Curtiss and Sons, whose painted signage survives on the north elevation of the brewery building. By the inter-war years, the mansion and part of the brewery site had been sub-let to Featherstone’s department store, which eventually acquired possession of the buildings.

The earliest standing fabric possibly associated with the brewery may be the small rear wing of the mansion house, referred to as the ‘counting house’. This is a single bay of a pre-C18 building, now sandwiched between the rear of the mansion house and the main brewery complex. It has two storeys and a basement which evidence suggests was ventilated, thus may have been associated with some form of commercial activity. However, it is considered to be part of the mansion house and therefore forms part of that listed building.

Much remains unclear about the functions of some elements of the brewery; the buildings are the product of piecemeal alteration and were cleared of machinery when brewing ceased. Nevertheless, several C18 and C19 documents, as well as the standing fabric itself, are instructive. A plan accompanying a deed of 1877, the year of the brewery’s sale to Charles Arkcoll, indicates the footprint of the site to be little altered from that shown on the 1842 Tithe map. It establishes a terminus post and ante quem for various elements and gives names, related to usage, of constituent parts at that time. These names are used here, where appropriate.

The earliest structure of the brewery complex is at its centre: a timber-framed building, approximately square in plan, now built-against on all sides. It is currently estimated to date from the C18, quite probably the early part of that century. However, dendrochronological dating has identified the presence of C17, as well as C18, timbers, meaning it could, at least in part, be earlier. It is labelled as a store on the 1877 plan, but its internal subdivision into ‘bins’ and the overhead walkways suggest its purpose as a store for malt and possibly hops. Historic accounts of the site refer to there being ‘malt rooms’ and it seems likely that these are they. This structure will therefore be referred to here as the malt store. Beneath the main floor of the malt store is a brick-built lower-ground floor, probably the result of C19 excavation.

To the west and south-west of the malt store are two brick structures, labelled in 1877 as an ale store and tun room, respectively. The tun room pre-dates the ale store, but both are estimated to date from the late C18 to early C19. The tun room may be the new vat store of 1796, mentioned in a lease of 1806 after Hulkes’ death. Hard against the east side of the malt store is a building labelled ‘brewery’ and dated to 1837 by the 1877 plan. Early-C20 aerial images of this building show it having a chimney, suggesting it may have been home to a boiler and engine. Its construction in 1837 may coincide with the brewery’s conversion from water to steam power. The single-storey brewery office to the south of the 1837 brewery building was either rebuilt, or remodelled, under Arkcoll and Co. The name ‘Lion Brewery’ is set above the door.

According to a report in the Brewers Guardian, by 1881 Arkcoll and Co had rebuilt and modernised the manufacturing and fermenting portions of the site to designs by Arthur Kinder, a known brewery architect. The 1898 OS map, together with a labelled plan of 1912 (belonging to sales particulars) build a picture of the extent of this modernisation. The collection of stores, sheds and stables to the north of the malt store, illustrated in the 1877 plan, were rebuilt and labelled in 1912 as a beer store; this building is now commonly known by its subsequent use as the ‘bonded warehouse’.

Also mapped by 1898 is the ‘hoist room’, sandwiched between the north wall of the malt store and the south wall of the bonded warehouse, and a space which has been referred to as the ‘cooperage’. Neither of these labels appear on plans but are colloquially used for these parts of the complex. The cooperage occupies the area previously thought to be an open yard which had the malt store to the north, the tun room to the west, the counting house to the south and the brewery office to the east.

Other alterations to the brewery site, which extend beyond the scope of this list entry, include the eastward extension of the wharf and, as labelled in 1912, the addition of a cooper’s shop, carpenter’s shop and bottling store (all now lost).The row of small houses on the east side of Hulkes Lane was replaced with new stabling, and the mansion garden across the High Street was truncated and wagon sheds built in front of the water tower.

Beyond the bonded warehouse to the north, is a large C20 industrial shed, not associated with the brewery and not included in the listing. This may retain fragmentary fabric from a building dating from the mid-C19, labelled in 1912 as a cask washing shed.

The brewery buildings and the associated mansion house stand near the centre of the area known as Chatham Intra. This name is associated with an area of sloping land extending down to the river Medway that links the historic settlements of Rochester and Chatham. It was split administratively between the two towns and straddled three parishes and was traversed by an ancient routeway running between London and Canterbury and onward to Dover, of Roman or earlier origin. Development here began in the late C11 with the construction of the Hospital of St Bartholomew for people with leprosy, but more concerted building along the routeway only got underway in the late C17. This came both from the west, as a suburban extension of Rochester, and from the east, as part of Chatham’s rapid growth following the establishment of a naval dockyard in the late C16. Thereafter the fortunes of Chatham were closely tied to the military, as a garrison town and naval base serving the needs of soldiers, sailors and marines, until the late C20.

From the C18 the area began to develop an increasingly commercial and industrial character, including ship-building, brewing and the movement of goods, notably coal and timber. This encouraged the building of wharves and piers along the riverside, connected to the increasingly built-up frontage of the High Street by narrow lanes lined with cottages and small houses, or, as in the case of Hulkes Lane, industry.

Further impetus came from the railways, which crossed the Medway in 1853. Commercial development along the High Street was given a boost by the rebuilding necessitated by two major fires in 1800 and 1820. Subsequently pursued by landowners seeking to build more densely but also to enable road widening along what had become a congested thoroughfare.

At the turn of the C20 Chatham Intra was flourishing place, it’s High Street supporting a lively mixture of shops, theatres, public houses and hotels. Decline came in the later part of the C20, with the loss of military facilities and the closure of the dockyard, but despite losses the area retains a considerable amount of historic fabric and an urban grain shaped by the historical patterns of growth and redevelopment that define its present-day character. The Hulkes Lane brewery complex and its associated mansion house is perhaps the most evocative collection of buildings relating to the area’s industrial history from the C18 to the early C20.

Reasons for Listing

The Hulkes Lane brewery buildings are listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:

* as an evolved urban brewery site, reflecting changing patterns of industrial architecture and the progressive industrialisation of the brewing process in the C18 and C19;
* for the malt store, dating from the C18 or earlier, which survives as a legible timber-framed grain store belonging to an early phase of brewing on this site

Historic interest:

* in its evocative illustration of the activities and development pattern characterising this riverine area in the C18 and C19 as it developed alongside the expansion of Chatham, a major naval and garrison town.

Group value:

* as part of a significant, documented, group of listed buildings which collectively illustrate the residential, industrial and retail components of an urban brewery of the C18 and C19.

External Links

Historic England Listing

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