TQ 9075 SE ANCHOR LANE Sheerness Dockyard 933/5/113 The Boat Store 21.06.1962 Building Number 78 GV I Boat store, warehouse, disused. 1856-60, by Col GT Green RE and William Scamp, for the Admiralty Works Department, ironwork by Henry Grissell's Regents Canal Iron Works. Wrought-iron with corrugated iron cladding and roof. PLAN: Central aisle with parallel storage bays either side. EXTERIOR: 4 storey; 14x9-bay range. The sides divided by columns and floor beams into regular units, each with a corrugated iron panel, originally timber-clad, beneath a full-width window of 5 casements (formerly sliding sashes) each of 6 panes; the ground floor has 1946 brick infill under the windows. W front has a central 3-bay gable over ground-floor sliding doors, and the N side a hoist bay to the first-floor of the 9th bay from the front. Blind rear elevation. INTERIOR: has a frame of cast-iron H-section columns and I-section joists, with rivetted wrought-iron longitudinal beams carrying cantilever brackets for 3 intermediate timber joists to each bay. Divided internally into three sections, an open central aisle 3 bays wide and with storage bays each side also 3 bays wide, and divided into 7 bays by cast-iron I-section columns along the central aisle. This is spanned by a heavy rivetted beam one bay from the entrance for hoisting, and three wide travelling platforms at each floor running on rails for transporting boats the length of the building and between floors. In the SE corner of the third floor is an office area divided by glazed panels, and a timber winder stair leads from this floor up into an octagonal cupola above the roof. This has trusses with cruciform struts and wrought-iron tension members. HISTORY: boat stores were built in all the royal yards for the large number of small boats used by the navy. The Sheerness store is remarkable however for its size and efficient storage and handling arrangement, and also for its innovatory structural system. The all-metal frame was made rigid by portal bracing, subsequently adopted by the skyscraper pioneers in Chicago, and universal for modern steel-framed building. Precedents can be found in the slip covers built in the royal dockyards during the 1830s and 40s, notably the fine series at Chatham, culminating in Greene's own No.7 slip cover (qv). The Boat Store, however, was the first structure to depend for its stability entirely on the rigidity of the joints. While a pioneer without immediate followers, it is of international significance in the development of modern architecture. Forms part of a group with the Boat basin and Buildings Nos 84 and 86 (qqv). (Sources: Coad J: The Royal Dockyards 1690-1850: Aldershot: 1989: 145-148; Transactions of the Newcomen Society: Skempton AW: The Boat Store Sheerness (1858-60): 1959-60: 57- 78 ; De Mare E: The Functional Tradition: London: 1958 ; Pevsner N: Pioneers of the Modern Movement: London: 1949). Listing NGR: TQ9088875297