The need for greater speed and efficiency in the Royal Dockyards to meet the ever-increasing demands of keeping the fleet at sea led to many of the great engineers of the day becoming involved in the mechanisation of many of the yard's industrial processes from sawing timber to the manufacture of rope and paint.
Such engineers included Marc Brunel, Henry Maudslay, John Rennie, Samuel Bentham, Simon Goodrich and Edward Holl and again serves to demonstrate the national importance of the dockyard at this time.
The southern end of the site was completely modernised with the construction of a new Double Ropehouse, the great Anchor Wharf Storehouses and Edward Holl's Lead and Paint Mill of 1817. Towards the centre of the yard Holl, the Navy Board's architect, built the Royal Dockyard Church, the Officers' Offices (now Admiral's Offices) and No 1 Smithery; whilst on land acquired to the rear of the Dockyard wall, Brunel, Bentham and Holl erected a steam powered Saw Mill, one of Britain's earliest mechanical saw mills and the first use of steam at Chatham. In 1820 Rennie constructed Chatham's first stone dry dock (No 3 Dry Dock) and engine house for a steam powered dock pump, the South Dock Pumping Station.
The top right photograph shows The Double Ropehouse, completed in 1791, which has an internal length of 1,135ft (346m). It is called the "double ropehouse" because both the yarn spinning and rope closing processes were carried out in the same building. The photograph to the left shows the Admiral's Offices, formerly the Officer's Offices, 1808.
