Old Timber Yard, Historic Dockyard, Chatham, Kent Archaeological Watching Brief

During 2000 and 2001, Oxford Archaeology (OA) carried out an archaeological watching brief at the Old Timber Yard, Historic Dockyard, Chatham in Kent. The work was commissioned by David Hicken Associates on behalf of Try Homes in advance of the construction of new housing. This followed an archaeological evaluation of the site carried out in 1999 by the Oxford Archaeological Unit. The watching brief confirmed, as suggested by the earlier evaluation, that much of the site had been subject to extensive truncation during terracing of the hillside to create building platforms for former industrial structures on the site. Profiles of the former land surface were seen to survive under College Road, as ground on the down-slope side of the terraces had needed to be made up.

Remedial works to the eastern perimeter walls showed the construction of the main perimeter wall with two subsidiary internal walls. Together these walls had two probable functions; firstly to assist retaining the ground up slope and outside the dockyard (where Dock Road currently runs), and secondly to provide access ways (possible from Dock Road) to the newly acquired areas of the dockyard. All the walls are thought to be contemporary (with some later alterations) and relate to the dockyards expansion eastwards in 1811, and the modernisation of the timber yards and timber conversion facilities at Chatham by the installation of Brunel's Steam Saw Mills between 1812 and 1814.