As you can imagine, it takes a lot to drain four dry docks. Pump House 5 contained
the equipment to do the job.
As you can imagine, it takes a lot to drain four dry docks. Pump House 5 contained
the equipment to do the job.
Situated level with the open ends of the docks, between the last dock and the River Medway, the pump house is around 200 feet long and 50 feet wide.
The square part of the building nearest the camera is the base of a huge chimney, which carried away the smoke from the steam engines' boilers, but which has been removed since the building fell into disuse.
To give you an idea of the power of the steam engines that were housed in here, the dry docks were drained during 2009 to allow building work. This was done with a diesel pump, and took three days. The steam powered pumps in the pump house used to be able to drain a dry dock in 45 minutes!
The pillars along the side of the building in the previous photo run along the side
of a covered corridor, which shelters several windows and (unfortunately locked!)
doors.
. At the south end of the covered corridor, just behind the camera position for the photo above, several dates have been engraved in stones in the brick wall. If you move your mouse over the picture, the carved stones will be highlighted. As you can see, there's also a circle painted on the wall. This might be a surveying mark; there's no sign of any writing to indicate it was a sign. As always, if you know what it was, please e-mail me.
Starting from the bottom, the lowest stone is rectangular and looks like it says
"8/4/36".
The next one up is a trapezoid, which is a strange shape for a stone to be laid
into a wall made from normal bricks. I couldn't tell whether the bricks around it
had been cut to fit to it, or whether what you can see is just some sort of face
plate and has a normal shaped back. It looks like it says "7/1/32".
The highest stone is rectangular and looks like it says "14/2/33".
I don't know what these dates mean; if they were there to mark dates when the stones were laid into the brickwork, then the lowest stone would have the earliest date, but it doesn't.
Maybe they're just graffitti, but if they are, why isn't there any on the surrounding bricks? The wall is sheltered, so any carving would last for a long time. If the dates are just graffitti, who carved them, and why were the stones built into the wall in the first place?
At the end of the covered corridor is a bricked up door and a bricked up window
on the wall to the left.
The bricked up door would have lead into this office, with what would have been
some very nice wooden panelling in it. The main entrance is just behind the panel
on the right.
Moving back along the corridor, there are a couple of windows I managed to take
photos through, which show a few bits and pieces which have been left in the pumphouse.
This photo was taken through the southern windows, and shows a workbench on the
left, a large pile of old wood in the middle, and a cabinet on the right which has
its own ventilation.
Moving north, towards the bricked up door, and looking through the windows at the
other end of the building, there are several pieces of machinery covered with tarpaulins.
The floor also has several metal covers on it, presumably to give access to the
pumping machinery below.
Viewed from the north, you can see the main entrance. When I first visited I tried
to see inside the building, but I couldn't much. There seemed to be a couple of
offices, and a few stairs leading upwards, but little else.
Looking a little closer, you can see that there's a barrier in front of the main
door, so you can't get too close. The date the building was finished, 1873, is quite
plain to see though.
There's also a fenced-off area in front of the pump house, to the right, marked as being a dangerous area.
If it's marked as dangerous, it must be worth a look! A number of planks form a
cover over a couple of big holes in the ground. Presumably this was where the outlet
from the pumping equipment is, allowing the water to flow through the sea wall into
the Medway.
Looking from the east gives a better overall impression of the area.
The pump house was built in 1873; the date is on the white stone above the main
entrance. The brickwork gives you an idea of its age - the mixture of red and yellow
bricks, along with the decorative way the bricks have been laid, are typical of
Victorian industrial buildings.
I don't know whether there are any definite plans for the pumphouse at the moment. If I find out anything, I'll put the extra information on this site.
Continuing north from the pumphouse takes you to St Mary's Island.
All photographs copyright 2007 - 2008 Jason Ross