South Gate, Chapel, Offices And Museum, Fulwood Barracks

SD53SW FULWOOD WATLING STREET ROAD (North side)

1023/7/10003 South Gate, chapel, offices and museum, Fulwood Barracks 29.3.1982

GV II

Barrack Master's office, quartermaster's store, entrance archway and chapel, now chapel, offices and museum. 1842-1848, Major T Foster RE, for the Ordnance Board. Sandstone ashlar with ashlar gable and ridge stacks and slate roof Late Georgian style. Single-depth plan with first-floor chapel over central archway, flanking offices, with N museum. EXTERIOR: 2 storeys; 8:5:8-window range. Symmetrical front to parade ground has central section set forward with pilaster strips, cornice and blocking course, and lower ranges each side; 3-window pedimented section set forward with keys and imposts to rendered central segmental archway and flanking narrow round archways, clock in the pediment and a square cupola on the pediment with louvred sides and a shallow square dome with weather vane; architraves to round-arched windows, 10/10-pane ground-floor sashes and mid C20 stained glass first floor lights. Flanking ranges have inner doorways with plain surrounds to C20 doors and flat-arched 6/6-pane sashes. Single-storey lean-to buildings with end 6/6-pane sashes against either gable. Rear elevation facing barracks entrance similar, without pedimented centre, the right-hand wing has a central stair tower, and the single-storey ends have plain surrounds to flat-headed doorways. The archway supported by 2 diaphragm arches. INTERIOR: chapel entrance to right of archway leads by mid C20 stairs to first-floor chapel, containing mid C20 pews and panelling. HISTORY: built in response to anxiety over Chartist agitation. This is one of the earliest occurrences of a church within a barrack. Although the south-east barrack range has been lost, the original plan of 2 parade squares within a defensible perimeter wall is substantially intact, making Fulwood the most complete surviving example in England of the late eighteenth concept of barrack design. (PSA Drawings Collection, NMR: MCR 58; The Buildings of England: Pevsner N: North Lancashire: London: 1969-: 202).

Listing NGR: SD5488331546