Clock House Building, Berwick Barracks Museum

The Clock House building, now part of the Barracks Museum, was originally built as a storehouse between 1739 and 1741 for the Ordnance Board. It is constructed of sandstone ashlar with gable and axial stacks, and a slate double-pile roof, exhibiting a vernacular Baroque style. The building closes the south side of the parade ground quadrangle.

The building is two storeys and an attic, with a 9:1-window range to the front. It features a symmetrical front with clasping pilasters and a central three-window section projecting forward to a raised pediment, incorporating steps, a thin cornice, and a parapet, with stepped end gables. A round-arched central doorway features key and impost stones, studded double doors, and a first-floor clock set within a full-height round-arched recess. The ground floor has round-arched small-paned windows, a boarded door two bays from the right, and the first floor has segmental-arched windows with 8/8-pane casements. The left-hand return has a central round-arched doorway with a large fanlight, margin lights, and a panelled door, a single segmental-arched first-floor casement, and two attic casements in the gables. The rear elevation has late 18th-century 6/6-pane sash windows inserted on the ground floor, possibly replacing what were originally windowless walls, six first-floor casements like those on the front, and a tall central round-arched cross window beneath a casement window leading to the stairs.

A perpendicular block to the right is partially obscured by a nearby barracks block. It has a flattened gable and connecting parapet. It features a left-hand segmental-arched doorway with fanlight and boarded door, an 8/8-pane sash above, and a coped gable with altered ground-floor door and windows, and two first-floor windows, including a central attic window.

The interior contains double panelled inner doors leading to a central dogleg stair, with an uncut string, splat balusters, square newels, and a moulded rail. A series of axial timber posts are present on the ground floor.

Originally built as a storehouse, the building was later converted to an officers’ mess, and was originally shown as such on a 1788 map. It is part of the earliest planned barracks complex in England, built nearly 80 years before most other English barracks due to the need for a permanent garrison on the Scottish border.