Details
This list entry was subject to a Minor Amendment on 14 February 2025 to amend the name and address and reformat the text to current standards.
TQ 9175 SW
933/2/10003
Sheerness Dockyard
MAIN ROAD (north side),
Former Sawmill, Building Numbers 105, 106 and 107
(Formerly listed as Former Sawmill, Building Numbers 105-107)
GV
II
Steam-powered sawmill, fire-engine house and store, now workshops and-offices. 1856-58, by Col G T Greene, for the Admiralty Works Department, ironwork by Fox, Henderson; boiler house raised c1860. Yellow stock brick with slate roof and iron frame.
PLAN: square plan saw mill with parallel northwest engine and southwest boiler house with attached chimney, and east junk store with fire engine houses both ends. Two storeys, attic and basement; eight bay sawmill, 4 x 10 bay junk store, 2 x 3 bay boiler house and 1 x 3 bay engine house.
EXTERIOR: main sawmill block is parapeted with wide clasping buttresses and two shallow gables each end, cobbled ramps lead up to full-width cast-iron doorways with later infill or doors, with upper small-paned iron tilting casements, six first floor segmental-arched casements in matching recesses, and large tripartite attic lunettes in matching recesses. Beam engine house set back with round-arched ground floor openings to the end and sides, and a heavy granite bearing pad set in the lower side wall, segmental-arched upper casements, and a later iron water tank on top. Boiler house immediately to the southwest one bay wider, with a round-arched cart doorway with double doors in the west end, thin plat band and cornice, and two late C19 ground floor windows. Battered square chimney at the northwest end. Fire engine houses project either end of the junk store beyond the sawmill, with matching pedimented ends, with five bay cast-iron ground-floor doorways and windows as the sawmill, all but one bay in the west end bricked up, with a segmental-arched window to the side, and similar casement windows to the first floor; a blocked oculus in the pediment. The returns either end on the inner side have a round-arched doorway with overlight and fanlight, leading to the stairs. Southeast elevation has an arcade of nine wide, recessed round-arched ground-floor windows, formerly open, and doorways at the east end and three bays in, single casement window at the west end, and segmental-arched first-floor casements.
INTERIOR: the sawmill divided into seven aisles by an internal iron frame of large round tapering columns with T -section lateral and transverse beams with parabolic bottom flanges, attached with at the columns with shrink rings, and T-section fish-belly joist which rest on the upper surface. Basement not inspected. Upper floor contains slender iron posts to wide composite wrought-iron trusses with diagonal braces and cast-iron struts, clearly an advanced Greene design; the north-west room has multiple bracing to its hipped roof, in the manner established for example by the Rennie's at the Royal William Yard in Plymouth in the 1830s.
Fire-engine houses have cantilevered stone dogleg stairs with iron stick balusters at either end, the junk store with an internal iron frame, divided on the first floor by mid C20 partitions. Engine and boiler house not inspected, boiler house noted as having c1860 rivetted lateral beams with transverse beams and joists as in the saw mill.
HISTORY: a large steam-powered saw mill, replacing the hand saw pits in Building 23 (qv), powered by a pair of rotative beam engines. The design and structural system is almost identical with that of the contemporary South Saw Mill, Devonport, and contrasts with the more innovatory system used by Greene for the nearby Boat Store (qv), built two years later. This reflects the greater stresses imposed by sawing, and is evidence of the understanding of metal framing at the time of the milestone Boat Store. The basement housed the foundations for the machines most notably the curvilinear saw frames which had to be deeply set in order to withstand severe vibration, and the shafting and belt drives. Included for historic interest, and as part of a group with Building 23, the former sawyers' shop, and the Boat Store (qqv), within a unique planned early C19 dockyard.
(Sources: Sheerness, The Dockyard, Defences and Blue Town: 1995: NMR BI NO 93279; Transactions of the Newcomen Society: Skempton A W: The Boat Store, Sheerness: London: 1959-1969: 64).
Listing NGR: TQ9115775249
