FAVERSHAM TR 06 SW HAM ROAD 659/6/10018 Melting House (Building 20) at former 14-DEC-01 Marsh Gunpowder Works, Workshop Area GV II Melting house at saltpetre refinery, part of gunpowder works, now store. 1800-10. Red brick with corrugated iron hipped roof. PLAN: Rectangular single-cell plan. EXTERIOR: Single storey, a wide full-height opening to the SE with a louvered light to the right, rear has two cast-iron windows; two buttresses to the NE end. INTERIOR: 2 king post trusses with ties to end walls and diagonal struts; corner ties. HISTORY: The Marsh works were part of the Royal Gunpowder Factory which was established outside Faversham in 1786 after an explosion in the town, to remove some of the more dangerous processes. They played an important part in the improvement of British gunpowder leading up to and during the Napoleonic Wars, under William Congreve. The saltpetre refinery was built in 1789 as part of Congreve's successful drive to improve the ingredients of British powder. It was privatised after the war, and closed in the 1920s. The melting house was where saltpetre was boiled in solution before being taken to the adjoining refining and crystallising house (qqv). It forms part of a discrete, coherent group of late C18-early C19 industrial buildings for refining saltpetre, the best preserved of this type in the country and comparable with French and Swedish examples. (Wayne Cocroft, Dangerous Energy. The archaeology of gunpowder and military explosives manufacture. Swindon (English Heritage), 2000, pp. 54-67)