Chatham Dockyard (37 page)

A starting point, as regards to the preservation of buildings in the historic enclave was that of a Naval Base Joint Planning Team having suggested, six years prior to the closure announcement, that this area of Chatham yard could be released into the public domain. As a consequence, the Ancient Monuments Board, a government advisory body that was to be later subsumed into English Heritage, began to take an interest in how the site might be developed.
Apart from ensuring that a number of buildings within the enclave were saved from demolition (notably the No.1 Smithery and the eighteenth-century timber sheds) the Board oversaw the production of a report that not only endorsed the historic value of buildings within the enclave but also suggested that, in opening it out to the public, it become ‘an extension of the National Maritime Museum’.
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On the north side of the No.2 Basin a boardwalk has been installed that connects to various footpaths that pass through parts of St Mary’s Island that is still verdant and undeveloped.

Boiler Shop No.1, one of the buildings removed from the dockyard at Woolwich and re-erected at Chatham and which now survives as Dockside (an enclosed shopping centre), is to be seen on the left. Just creeping into view on the right is the former Machine Shop and also brought to the yard from Woolwich. Although this latter building was originally clad in corrugated sheeting, it suffered substantial storm damage in October 1987 and had to be removed with only the frame of the building retained. It is now a Grade II listed building.

Within the dockyard there was a further important early development that pre-dated the closure announcement. This was the formation of the Chatham Dockyard Historical Society (CDHS) by a number of enthusiasts who were employed in the yard and keen to ensure that its history should be properly researched and individual memories preserved. With Admiralty permission, CDHS established a museum in the Lead and Paint Mill, an important building that dated back to 1818, where historical artefacts from around the yard were initially stored with a view to their preservation and eventual display. In February 1981 the first activity organised by the new society took place, members using their lunch break and part of an afternoon working session to take into their newly acquired museum a dozen old ships’ figureheads that had been deteriorating while standing in the open outside Medway House. Numerous other artefacts soon followed, these collected from both around the yard or presented to the society by fellow yard artisans who had also taken to searching out their attics for tools and other yard memorabilia.

While preservation of the historic enclave might have been best served by it becoming an extension of the National Maritime Museum, this was not to be viewed as a possibility by the Conservative government that forced the closure of the yard. With the museum at Greenwich a publicly funded body, any such attachment to this institution would have
imposed upon the government a long-term additional commitment. Instead, and in keeping with the government’s overriding philosophy of seeking out market solutions, it was determined that a dedicated Trust should be established. Officially taking over the oldest part of the dockyard on 1 April 1984, the newly formed Chatham Dockyard Historic Trust (CDHT) began life with an £11.3 million government endowment, an amount that fell far short of actual need. In fact the Trust had originally bid for £18 million, its governing body aware that many of the buildings it had acquired were in considerable need of repair and renovation, with the ropery alone requiring £2 million for work on its conservation.
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The Ship and Trades public house which stands alongside the No.1 Basin is a former dockyard office and an engineering shop that dates to 1875.

The surprise announcement of the dockyard’s closure created a much more extensive problem for the St Mary’s Island end of the yard as it had always been assumed that this would be retained for warship repair and maintenance. An expansive area that was dominated by a number of ageing industrial buildings, it also contained a stretch of open land that had never witnessed any form of development other than that of an encircling river wall. In addition, and providing the area with a unique facility, was that of the three extensive basins (one of them replete with five dry docks) that ran the entire length of the former St Mary’s Creek. Ensuring plenty of opportunity for imaginative planning, something that was not always present in the early stages of the project, it was to allow for a mixture of development that would eventually see a coalescing of industry, housing and leisure facilities.

First to take an interest in the St Mary’s Island site was the Medway (Chatham) Dock Company, a body which had been established under the auspices of the Medway Ports Authority. Taking over the No.3 Basin some three months before the official
departure of the Navy, Medway Dock Company at that time acquired responsibility for an area of land that amounted to 100 acres. Here were established eight separate commercial berths together with the subsequent development of a fully operational cargo terminal.

Another important player in the redevelopment of St Mary’s Island was English Heritage, later English Partnerships, the government’s urban regeneration agency. On 1 April 1984, upon the official departure of the Navy, they took over the area of the dockyard not already under the ownership of CDHT or the Medway Dock Company, an area comprising of 350 acres. In addition, the area of the former naval barracks, HMS
Pembroke
, fell into their remit, this allowing for a degree of integrated planning. Charged with the task of completely redeveloping the entire area, English Partnerships were the subject of much local criticism when they undertook a wholesale demolition of numerous former dockyard buildings that they considered to have no further use. They did, however, retain the No.8 Machine Shop, the Boiler Shed and the Machine Shed, all of which had begun life at Woolwich and had been brought to Chatham shortly after the closure of that particular yard in 1869. Another early move and seen as a simple marketing tool, was that of abandoning the word dockyard and redesignating the planned development as ‘Chatham Maritime’.

Whilst there was some early use of existing buildings, mostly the barrack blocks and chapel that once belonged to HMS
Pembroke
; a major problem was that of limited road access into the site. This was alleviated by the construction of the Medway Tunnel and Northern Relief Road in the late 1990s. In addition, English Partnerships also carried out extensive work on flood defences, remediation, and the installation of services, in order to make it possible to attract new development to the Chatham Maritime project. In 1999 English Partnerships gave way to South East England Development Agency
(SEEDA), which continues to develop Chatham Maritime.

An important aspect of the redevelopment of St Mary’s Island is that of housing; this an important asset to an area of north Kent desperately short of space for the construction of residential homes.

The Dockyard Engine House that once held the machinery, supplied by Messrs J. and G. Rennie of Blackfriars, used for the pumping out of the four original docks that were annexed to the No.1 Basin. The machinery was first trialled on 10 March 1874, running at 100 revolutions per minute. Within the building, a second, reserve engine was also in place, this formerly belonging to HMS
Forth
. On the occasion of the trial, 20,000 tons of water was pumped from one of the docks in 39 minutes, with a remaining 14,830 tons from the lower half, pumped in 66 minutes. The Engine House, itself, which has recently been restored, is a red-brick building of 77ft in length with an external arcade of brick piers. Immediately adjoining the Engine House was the Boiler House, having the same external appearance and which, itself, once housed nine separate boilers of the Cornish double flue style.

Overall, one must conclude that the redevelopment of the former dockyard has been a highly successful project. The three areas, into which the dockyard was divided, following its closure in 1984, have all recorded a significant number of successes and from this point of view it is worth viewing each in turn. Tucked away on the No.3 Basin, Medway Ports Ltd continue to develop the site. Now owned by Peel Docks, and simply known as Medway Ports, the port authority continues in its landlord role while directly operating one of the berths. According to the company’s own latest figures, it now handles in excess of 1 million tonnes of cargo per year. As such, Medway Ports must be considered a definite success story bringing, as it does, a clear boost to the local economy while also providing a number of permanent jobs.
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CDHT, which was the second of the replacement products to the dockyard to get going, has slowly but surely pulled itself out of its early and rather disappointing beginnings. Most certainly it had a difficult hill to climb, being at that time perennially short of money and generally unable to pull in the number of visitors to which such a large-scale museum complex requires in order to ensure its survival. In its first decade of being open, it never really exceeded the 100,000 figure while the much less impressive and smaller historic enclave at Portsmouth dockyard was pulling in an annual 500,000 visitors. But then Portsmouth had then, and still has, HMS
Victory
, a Chatham-built ship, as its major attraction! What CDHT lacked in those early days was something ‘sexier’ than just buildings, even though forty-seven of them are now scheduled ancient monuments. Admittedly the ropery, itself an outstanding structure replete with machinery that
dates back to the early part of the nineteenth century, was able to put on unique demonstrations of rope making that never failed to impress, but this was never going to be enough to excite the masses.