Rifle Range And Targets

1132/0/10002 07-MAR-05

UPTON UPON SEVERN Rifle Range and Targets

II

Rifle Range Target. C.1860. Blue and red brick laid in English bond. A tall wall [the stop wall] c.7m. high and 30 m. long with end sections returned at roughly 45 degrees [the screen walls]. To the rear the structure is supported by 3 stepped buttresses. The front wall facing down the range is mostly of hard blue brick in English bond with some red brick patching. The rear elevation is of red brick with limestone caps to the buttresses and moulded brick to the angles. Brick coping. Wall across the front formerly incorporating roofed cubicles or supporting a wooden platform from which targets were raised is now fragmentary but stands in places up to level of joist holes in the stop wall at roughly a third of its height. the targets, often of paper, hung on frames, sometimes metal, were raised on pulleys. Later rebuilding/extension mostly in red brick of the screen walls and front wall, which created the protected covered way shielding the operators.

Following the outbreak of the Crimean War and during the late 1850s a series of rifle volunteer units were formed across the country in anticipation of war with France. Four years previously Lord Palmerstone oversaw a Royal Commission to analyse British Defences which led to the building of a string of forts along the south coast of Britain; local provision was also encouraged. Some 21 independent rifle companies were formed in Worcestershire of which the Upton Company was the 19th. In 1860 they were formed into 2 administrative battalions. The rifle range was built to enable target practice. A 1,000 yard range was built on an area of charity land called the Upper Ham. The range continued to be used by the County Territorial Army Association until 1925 and was used again in the Second World War by the Home Guard.