Gunboat Yard Engine House Complex

Summary

An engine house, boiler house, horse wheel house, coal store, chimney and former well houses, c1854.

Reasons for Designation

The engine house complex, c1854, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
* Industrial interest: a relatively complete survival of an engine house complex in which the process is legible, which has a functional relationship with the listed hospital laundry;
* Architectural interest: a robust and good-quality building with a degree of architectural pretension unexpected for the building type;
* Group value: with the other listed structures in the hospital grounds and the gunboat yard, and within the context of Haslar, Gosport, and Portsmouth as an important national centre of naval history and development.

History

Haslar Gunboat Yard is a unique naval site at Gosport, Hampshire. It operated as a yard for the housing and repair of British gunboats between 1856 and 1906, and subsequently for the gunboats' successors and other naval craft. The site comprises a series of original iron sheds for housing the gunboats, part of the traverser system used for their launch and movement and a collection of ancillary buildings relating to repair, maintenance and power provision both for the gunboat yard and the Royal Naval Hospital, Haslar on the opposite side of Haslar Road. The site is bounded by high walls with sentry posts, and has a guard house and police barracks.

The Royal Naval Hospital, Haslar, was the first hospital in England to be purpose-built for the Navy, begun in 1745-46 and completed in 1761-62. Although laundering facilities were provided from the outset, these proved inadequate and a new laundry (NHLE 1424209) was planned for the hospital in 1854. The building had a range of large-scale steam washing machinery the power, hot water and steam for which were supplied by the engine house complex within the Gunboat Yard. This complex appears to have been based around an earlier well-house complex, which was used to supply water to the hospital, possibly from as early as the late C18. By the mid-C19 there were two well shafts and a horse-powered pumping mechanism used to bring up the water from the wells and pump it across the road to the water tanks for the hospital. At the same time as the construction of the new laundry, this complex was re-fitted and an engine house and boiler house constructed. A second well was sunk in 1859, and a well house built to the east of the engine house. Power and water from the complex was taken into the hospital via an underground subway which ran under Haslar Road. The 1854 plan of this complex indicates that this provision was intended to supply not just the laundry but also the main water provision for the hospital. The engine house complex stands in its own forecourt, separated from the rest of the gunboat yard by high brick walls.

Although primarily for the Hospital, it is possible that the engine house played a small role in powering the Gunboat Yard. Piping leading from the boiler room to the sheds suggests that power was directed into the gunboat sheds, perhaps to power small machinery in the shed itself, though this was not part of the primary phase of construction.

The engine house was initially steam-driven, but was fitted for electrical supply around 1905-06. The machinery within the boiler house is a replacement of the original boilers, which sat at 90 degrees to the current arrangement. The boilers have a secondary hopper system inserted against their principal faces, with a name plate indicating that they were built by James Hodgkinson (Salford) Ltd, and a patent number of 628031. Although this patent has not been traced, James Hodgkinson was a firm well known for producing automatic stoker systems from the late C19 into the C20. The exact date of this system is not known.

The subterranean tunnel within the engine house is a secondary iteration of the original design, which had a longer incline running to the tunnel which turned through 90 degrees within the engine house. The footprint of the building and lack of engine infrastructure in the structural components of the buildings suggests that it housed a horizontal rather than vertical engine.

Historic maps show a structure on the site of the original well house which extended to the rear wall of the gunboats sheds. This is no longer present; a smaller, modern well house has been built in its place, and joist holes, tiling and footings indicate the form of the earlier building. On the north east side of the forecourt, too, are the remains of a large coal store.

The engine house complex bears the scars of reordering, with blocked and inserted openings and other alterations relating to its changing use.

Details

An engine house, boiler house, horse wheel house, coal store, chimney, and former well houses, c1854.

ARCHITECT: the design of the engine house complex is presumed to have been undertaken by the Admiralty Works Department, which was under the control of Colonel Greene, the Director of Works and William Scamp, the Deputy Director of Engineering and Architectural Works.

MATERIALS: the buildings are red brick, mostly laid in Flemish bond. The engine house has a wrought iron roof structure, and the group has corrugated iron and slate roofs.

PLAN: the buildings stand within the Haslar Gunboat Yard in a line along its south-eastern boundary wall, on the opposite side of the road to the Royal Naval Hospital Laundry (NHLE ref 1424209). The complex is separated from the main gunboat yard by walls adjoining the rear of the gunboat sheds, creating a forecourt into which the main entrance from Haslar Road opens.

The engine house and boiler house, horse wheel house and coal store have an L-shaped footprint, with a chimney rising at their junction, from the boiler house. A well-house is built upon the north-east end, and a second, newer well-house on the south-west.

EXTERIOR: the engine house, boiler house, horse wheel house and coal store is a single-storey range with a brick parapet. Its south-eastern elevation forms part of the boundary wall of the gunboat yard, and is a roughly symmetrical composition with two tall arched doorways to either side, with three smaller arches in between. The left-most arch is an entrance to former coal store; all others are blind. A window with a flat concrete lintel has been inserted to light the boiler room. Most original openings throughout the building are beneath gauged brick round-arches, and a brick string course runs the length of the building above the height of these windows, indicating the base of the parapet.

Within the engine house complex forecourt, the main entrance to the engine house is on the north-west elevation, and to the west are two full-height round arched windows; the door retains a fanlight with radial glazing bars, and the windows retain multiple-light casements. The north-west elevation of the boiler house has a pair of windows, and an inserted doorway beneath a thick concrete lintel, and an oculus and inserted arched opening. The western wall of the complex extends north to the rear of the gunboat sheds, segregating this section of yard.

The chimney is square in plan and has projecting courses of brick at its head. A platform reached by two steps stands at the junction between the chimney, boiler house and engine house.

Sources

Books and journals
Coad, J, Historic Architecture of the Royal Navy, (1983)
SAVE Britains Heritage, , Deserted Bastions, (1993), 93
Coad, Jonathan, Support for the Fleet - Architecture & Engineering of the Royal Navy's Bases 1700-1914, (2013)

Other
Sarah PC Hendriks, Haslar Gunboat Yard, Gosport: Historic Buildings Report, 2014. Available at: services.english-heritage.org.uk/ResearchReportsPdfs/015_2014WEB.pdf
O Hickson, 2012 A Study of Haslar Gun Boat Yard with New Insights into Its History, Construction, Manufacture and Use. Unpublished MSc Building Conservation: Weald and Downland Open Air Museum with Bournemouth University
Jonathan Coad, ‘Appendix IV: History of Haslar Gunboat Yard’, in [A. Kelly & Jon Gill], Guardrooms, Haslar Gunboart Yard, Gosport. Buildings at Risk II Survey (Unpublished Oxford Archaeology report for Defence Estates, 2007)
Plan elevations and sections, Engine House, Haslar Gunboat Yard, Haslar, Gosport, Hampshire. Historic England Archive, Swindon, ref MD95/06517

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