Chatham Dock Pumping Station South
Chatham Dock Pumping Station South, Main Gate Road
Listed on the National Heritage List for England. Search over 400,000 listed places
Overview
- Heritage Category:
- Listed Building
- Grade:
- II*
- List Entry Number:
- 1378623
- Date first listed:
- 13-Aug-1999
- List Entry Name:
- Chatham Dock Pumping Station South
- Statutory Address:
- Chatham Dock Pumping Station South, Main Gate Road
Location
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Images of England Project
- Date:
- 2006-01-13
- Reference:
- IOE01/14273/32
- Rights:
- © Mr Gordon Richards. Source: Historic England Archive
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Official list entry
- Heritage Category:
- Listed Building
- Grade:
- II*
- List Entry Number:
- 1378623
- Date first listed:
- 13-Aug-1999
- List Entry Name:
- Chatham Dock Pumping Station South
- Statutory Address 1:
- Chatham Dock Pumping Station South, Main Gate Road
The scope of legal protection for listed buildings
This List entry helps identify the building designated at this address for its special architectural or historic interest.
Unless the List entry states otherwise, it includes both the structure itself and any object or structure fixed to it (whether inside or outside) as well as any object or structure within the curtilage of the building.
For these purposes, to be included within the curtilage of the building, the object or structure must have formed part of the land since before 1st July 1948.
The scope of legal protection for listed buildings
This List entry helps identify the building designated at this address for its special architectural or historic interest.
Unless the List entry states otherwise, it includes both the structure itself and any object or structure fixed to it (whether inside or outside) as well as any object or structure within the curtilage of the building.
For these purposes, to be included within the curtilage of the building, the object or structure must have formed part of the land since before 1st July 1948.
Location
- Statutory Address:
- Chatham Dock Pumping Station South, Main Gate Road
The building or site itself may lie within the boundary of more than one authority.
- District:
- Medway (Unitary Authority)
- Parish:
- Non Civil Parish
- National Grid Reference:
- TQ 75950 69294
Details
TQ 76 NE
762-1/8/60
CHATHAM
Chatham Dockyard
MAIN GATE ROAD (east side)
Chatham Dock Pumping Station South
GV
II*
Dock pumping station, now disused. c1816-23, by John Rennie Snr, late C19 extension. Yellow stock bricks with Portland stone dressings and a slate hipped roof. Late Georgian style.
PLAN: central boiler house with enclosed east chimney and engine houses each side. Two storeys; five-window range.
EXTERIOR: symmetrical front with the middle three windows set forward, plat band, cornice and blocking course. Round-arched ground-floor windows set in matching recesses with impost bands have 12112-pane sashes, flat-headed first floor metal framed casement windows, with an inserted flat-headed central entrance. Matching rear elevation has a blind central first-floor window beneath a square battered panelled chimney separated by an ashlar band from a short panelled base. A cast-iron pressure vessel stands in front of the south engine house. Late C19 single-storey range to the left front has brick infill below continuous upper glazing and corrugated iron gable and roof.
INTERIOR: central boiler house with late C19 gantry crane; south engine house, with the well at the west end, retains the beam floor and entablature, consisting of moulded cast-iron beams supported by a pair of round cast-iron columns; a cantilevered stone winder stair to the side of the chimney leads to the beam floor, which has hand cranks at either end of the slot for the engine beam and lifting hooks in the ceiling, with four iron columns at the corners; metal roof has wrought-iron ties and cast-iron tie beams and principals. Fittings included cast-iron panelled doors.
HISTORY: built by Rennie to drain his No.1 -now No.3 -dry dock (qv), the first stone dry dock at Chatham. The design is similar to his engine house at Sheerness (demolished) and illustrated in his Treatise on Docks. This is the oldest dock pumping station and, apart from the New River Head pumping station, the earliest surviving purpose-built pumping station in the country. It is also one of the oldest engine houses built for a Boulton and Watt engine.
A very early steam pumping station retaining considerable archaeological evidence for its working, and part of a fine assemblage of Georgian naval docks and dockyard buildings.
Listing NGR: TQ7606869399
Legacy
The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.
- Legacy System number:
- 476576
- Legacy System:
- LBS
Sources
Books and journals
Coad, J, Historic Architecture of Chatham Dockyard 1700-1850, (1982), 180
Rennie, J, The Formation and Construction of British and Foreign Harbours, (1851), Plate 17
MacDougall, P, Granite and Lime, Chatham Dockyard's First Stone Dry Dock in Archaeologia Cantiana, Vol. 107, (1989), 173-192
Legal
This building is listed under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 as amended for its special architectural or historic interest.
Map
This map is for quick reference purposes only and may not be to scale. This copy shows the entry on 09-Jun-2026 at 03:10:12.
Download a full scale map (PDF)End of official list entry
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