Command House and Attached Entrance Railings, Stable and Carriage House and Rear Wall

Details

762-1/2/6 DOCK ROAD 24-MAY-1971 (West side) Command House and attached entrance railings, stable and carriage house, and rear wall (Formerly listed as: DOCK ROAD Command House and attached entrance ra railings, outbuildings and rear wall) (Formerly listed as: HER MAJESTYS DOCKYARD House occupied by Deputy Armament Supply Officer, The Gun Wharf, Naval Section) (Formerly listed as: Storekeepers House)

GV II

Storekeeper's House then officer housing, now public house. c.1719 with late-C20 alterations. Red Flemish bond brick with stone dressings, gable stacks and an old tile valley roof, with hipped roofs to outer blocks, all behind brick parapets. Queen Anne style. Two storeys over raised basement; double-depth plan. EXTERIOR: Main range of 5-window bays, with flanking 2-storey, 1-window bay wings. Symmetrical front has a raised basement, string band, cornice and parapet. A wide central flight of steps up to central first floor has curtails, wrought-iron railings and column newels; doorcase has fluted Doric pilasters, triglyph frieze and projecting modillion cornice; door has 8 raised panels, panelled reveals and soffit. Gauged brick segmental arched windows with 6/6-pane sashes, those to first floor original and second floor replacements with horns. Flanking wings have cornices continued from the main range, wide tripartite windows of central 6/6-pane sashes and 2/2-pane sashes to ground and first floor and under gauged brick arches; return elevations with ground and first floor 6/6-pane sashes under similar arches. Coped gables have two 6/6-pane attic sashes beneath an open lunette to valley, and a wide stack. 5-window rear section with a large central round-arched stair window. To South, attached stable and carriage house range. This has 2 wide segmental-arched openings at ground floor; first floor plat band and central shortened 3/3-pane sash with flanking sunken panels; gable end rendered. INTERIOR: Basement retains some original brick groin vaulting and stone flag floor. Interior otherwise altered in late-C20 for public house use. Stable range has late-C19 queen post roof. SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: Attached rear brick wall extends approx. 30m from Southwest corner. HISTORY: Originally built as the Storekeeper's House and offices for Chatham Gun Wharf. The Gun Wharf occupies the site of the medieval wharves below the medieval church of St. Mary (rebuilt 1884-7 by Sir A Blomfield, q.v.). This was the site of the first Royal dockyard in the C16, and when in the C17 this relocated to a larger site, the area passed to the Board of Ordnance for use as the Gun Wharf (an arsenal and dock combined). The storekeeper's house first appears on a 1719 map of the site. An 1863 map identifies the building as Senior Ordnance Store Officer's Quarters, and the now demolished enormous Gun Carriage Store extended from the south wall of the coach house. In the late-C19 it housed the commissary and the Commissary General Office. Converted to public house use in 1978. SOURCES: Newman, J. The Buildings of England: West Kent and the Weald (London: 1976, p.204).

Group value with the Grade II former Gun Wharf ordnance building to the south (q.v.), Grade II Church of St Mary (q.v.), and the Chatham Lines, a Scheduled Monument.

Listed as a fine and externally unaltered early-C18 house that has additional historic interest as the earliest surviving building from the Chatham Gun Wharf.

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

462085

Legacy System:

LBS

Sources

Books and journals
Newman, J, The Buildings of England: West Kent and the Weald, (1976), 204

End of official list entry

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