IT IS hard to believe that the skeleton of cast iron that once housed skilled men making boilers and pipework for warships will soon be a temple to the god of shopping. But as manufacturing gives way to retail therapy, the £63 million Dockside Outlet Centre looks certain to become a Medway design icon.

Since 1887, the Old Boiler Shop has been a prominent feature of Chatham Dockyard and more recently Chatham Maritime.

For many years, experts wondered what to do with this Grade II listed building beloved by admirers of Victorian engineering. In the early 1990s, Dockside Developments entered the scene, convinced that the old structure would make an ideal factory shopping outlet. It has taken Mike Hewitt, Steve Reeves and Trevor Goff nearly a decade to convince local planners, investors and heritage experts to put faith in their scheme.

That tenacity has paid off as the complex - now more trendily called an outlet centre - is finally taking shape. Financed by a mix of private investors guaranteed a seven per cent return and business, the £63 million centre has created 150 construction jobs and will create some 200 in retail and related services.

TryAccord, part of the Galliford Try construction group with a local office at East Peckham, was given the complex task of building the centre. Guy Shepherd, project manager, says it was a risky project on reclaimed ground that has been filled with naval debris for nearly 500 years. Contractors did not know what would turn up. In the event, they uncovered several wartime air raid shelters, some cannonballs, an old cannon barrel, and a huge spanner that takes two men to lift.

There was also the possibility of nuclear bunkers, because the boiler shop was close to a Polaris submarine basin. TryAccord asked the Ministry of Defence for details - but found the Russians more helpful. They gave detailed maps of nuclear and radar installations in the south east.

Mr Shepherd is tight-lipped about whether anything related to nuclear activity was found. What he is sure about is the fine quality of the engineering found in the boiler shop. It was built by Fox Henderson in Woolwich in 1847 and moved to Chatham in 1887.

"As a civil engineer, I'm desperately impressed," he said. "It is the last long-span truss building in the United Kingdom." TryAccord and Dockside have worked closely with English Heritage to ensure the old structure is protected.

The clock tower, 100 feet above ground level and probably added in the 1890s, has been lovingly restored. Experts analysed flakes of original paint to determine the accuracy of the red used in the facelift of a beacon that can be seen for miles around.

Come June 2003, there should be some 85 designer outlets wooing customers to 150,00 sq ft of space. There will be a tented structure using material similar to that at The Dome, a food court and parking for nearly 1,000 cars. Six million shoppers live within an hour's drive, and Dockside's Trevor Goff expects more than three million to visit the centre every year.

The new complex will compete with the existing outlet centre at Ashford. Mr Goff says some of the designer names will be similar but is convinced Chatham will attract more visitors than Ashford because it is closer to larger numbers of people.