REVIT Heritage Report.pdf

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Torfaen County Borough Council REVIT: A Review of the Conservation of Industrial Heritage Assets on Brownfield Sites maritime history. The site now contains more than 100 small businesses and organisations and over 400 residents. 4.3.8 The abandonment of Chatham Dockyard by the Royal Navy in 1984 left many important historic maritime structures without a function. New and innovative economic functions were, therefore, required in order to maintain the dockyard. This required the establishment of an overall conservation and design strategy for the site as a whole and for the re-use of existing features. 4.3.9 Some of the re-uses of the existing buildings and structures include: • The Clock Tower Building: dating from 1723, it is a Scheduled Ancient Monument and Grade II* Listed Building and is oldest naval storehouse to survive in any of the Royal Dockyards. It was built as a store for materials and equipment needed by ships under construction and repair with a Mould Loft and the six ground floor bays at the north end of the structure were left open and used as saw pits. The Clock Tower building has been restored and used as the Bridgewarden’s College of the University of Kent; • The Mast Houses and Mould Loft: dating from 1753-58, it is a Scheduled Ancient Monument & Grade I Listed Building. It contains a range of seven timber framed mast houses, built largely from reused warship timbers. Today the building houses the Wooden Walls gallery; • Nos. 4, 5 & 6 Covered Slips: dating from 1847-48, they are Scheduled Ancient Monuments & Grade I Listed Buildings. The structures are a range of three identical early cast iron slip covers with corrugated iron roof sheeting. The slips now house the Royal National Lifeboat Institute’s (RNLI) collection of Historic Lifeboats; • Wheelwrights Shop: dating from c. 1786, it is a Scheduled Ancient Monument & Grade II* Listed Building. It was built as a three bay Mast House. Beneath the floor lay the Mary Rose warship. The Wheelwrights Shop now houses the Historic Dockyard’s restaurant; • House Carpenters Shop: dating from 1740, it is a Scheduled Ancient Monument & Grade II Listed Building. It was built for the carpenters who looked after the dockyard’s own buildings. The building now forms part of a series of craft workshops; • The Ropery: dating from 1786-91, it is a Scheduled Ancient Monument & Grade I Listed Building. The buildings of the Ropery form one of the finest integrated groups of 18th Century manufacturing buildings in Britain. Machinery dating from 1811 remains in regular use and on display to visitors; • Anchor Wharf Storehouses: dating from 1778-1805, it is a Scheduled Ancient Monument & Grade I Listed Building. It consisted of two great storehouses on Anchor Wharf. At nearly 700 feet long (210 metres) it is the largest storehouse built for the Royal Navy in Britain. Together with surviving examples in Portsmouth they are some of the most significant examples of early industrial warehousing in Europe. The Fitted Rigging House and Storehouse No. 2 now houses the Museum of The Royal Dockyard; • No. 3 Dry Dock: dating from 1820, it is a Scheduled Ancient Monument and Grade II* Listed Building. It houses HM Submarine Ocelot, the last warship built for the Royal Navy. Many of the other Victorian Covered Slipways and 0014021/JM/001 27
Torfaen County Borough Council REVIT: A Review of the Conservation of Industrial Heritage Assets on Brownfield Sites Dry Docks are still partly used for storage and maintenance and the display of boats; and • Officers Terrace and South Stables: these have been restored and converted to residential accommodation. • The adjacent site of the Chatham Historic Dockyard is Chatham Maritime, a former Royal Naval Base situated on the elbow of the bend in the River Medway marking the transition from the main river to its estuary. The site has been developed as a residential, higher education and commercial quarter and was, from 1986-1996, designated an Enterprise Zone. • Significant investment over the last ten years has enabled the creation of a new, high quality environment with the former Pembroke Barracks buildings now occupied by the University of Greenwich. This now has a student population of 6,000 from Kent University and 850 new houses on St Mary’s Island. • Chatham Port, which includes three historic buildings and the North Mast Pond, continues its well-established operation as a port handling timber and paper-related products and offering ship-repairing facilities into the foreseeable future. There are also proposals to extend this existing industrial operation. Tourism 4.3.10 Further historic sites around the Chatham Historic Dockyard area enable the tourist attraction to be extended into the surrounding area. These include Brompton, Fort Amherst and the Lines, which have a series of defensive ditches and ramparts dating from 1756. The defences around Fort Amherst provide an open field which has remained in use as sports grounds and public parks, and forms an important green space and buffer between Gillingham and the rest of the Medway Towns. 4.3.11 A further initiative in Medway has involved encouraging tourism by promoting the historic dockyard as part of a cross-border Maritime Heritage Trail in partnership with the Nord-Pas de Calais region of France. Similar crossborder trails and links can be an effective way of widening the tourist base and making existing budgets go further. 4.3.12 Chatham has literary connections with Charles Dickens who lived and wrote several of his famous novels nearby. An annual summer and winter Dickens Festival attract thousands of visitors to the Docks. 4.3.13 In addition, since the historic dockyard is adjacent to the River Medway, it has obvious potential for a range of tourism and leisure uses based on the possibility of improving public access to the river. A number of historic ships, for instance the paddle steamer the Waverley, currently make regular excursions from a number of sites around the coast of Britain and are usually fully subscribed; in the east of England these include the sites of Margate and Dover. Events which have proved tourist attractions, from other historic harbours/docks, include promoting day and weekend cruises on historic ships; this is currently being investigated by Nantes. 0014021/JM/001 28
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