TQ 76 NE CHATHAM ANCHOR WHARF (East side) Chatham Dockyard 762-1/8/32 Former Hatchelling House and Engine Room 24.5.71 GV II* Hatchelling house. 1787-1791. Brick with slate and tiled hipped roof. PLAN: single depth hatchelling room with attached store to the rear, and left-hand warehouse. EXTERIOR: 2 storey 4-window range hatchelling room; 4-storey 6-window range store. Hatchelling room has a wide end with pilaster strips one bay in to a corbelled cornice, parapet and central pediment containing a louvred lunette. Round-arched doorway with radial fanlight and double doors set within a matching recess, with tall right-hand 16/20-pane sash, first-floor 8/8-pane sashes and an off-centre hoist door with iron pivot hoist to the right. Right-hand return has 4 first-floor windows with paired 6/6-pane sashes. To the left a 4-storey range projects forward with 2 windows to the N end and 9-windows E side. Regularly-spaced rubbed-brick flat arches to 8/8-pane casements. Store to rear is recessed above the ground floor, with flat-headed casements. INTERIOR: large wooden stair flight, with timber posts supporting the floors. HISTORY: hatchelling was the first part of the rope-making process in which the hemp was combed preparatory to spinning in the spinning house of the ropery (qv). Built as part of the late C18 rebuilding of the S end of Dockyard, with the new Ropery, Rigging Store and Yarn houses (qqv). Part of the best ropeyard in the country, and a fine assemblage of Georgian dockyard buildings. (Sources: Coad J: Historic Architecture of Chatham Dockyard 1700-1850: London: 1982: 163 ; Coad J: The Royal Dockyards 1690-1850: Aldershot: 1989: 211 ; MacDougall P: The Chatham Dockyard Story: Rainham: 1987: 90; The Buildings of England: Newman j: West Kent and the Weald: London: 1976: 205). Listing NGR: TQ7582869016