Garrison Church Of Saint Peter And Saint Paul, Horseshoe Barracks

The Garrison Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, located within Shoebury Garrison, was originally a chapel and school built in 1866 for the British School of Gunnery, designed by J Egan Roper. It is constructed of ragstone with ashlar dressings and a slate roof, and is designed in a Gothic Revival style, combining Early English and Decorated elements.

The building has a cruciform plan, incorporating a nave, transepts, a chancel, and a southeast vestry. The exterior features a moulded plinth and steep gables. The east gable includes angle buttresses, triple lancet windows with trefoils above the outer lights, paired trefoil-headed north side windows, and a lateral stack to the left. The north gable of the nave has a diagonal buttress, while the southeast vestry gable has paired trefoil-headed lights at a low level and a small lancet window near the gable apex. The north transept gable features a hexafoil light at its top, with lancet windows on either side of an open timber gabled porch set on a dwarf wall with arched braces, leading to a moulded two-centre arched doorway with a double cross-boarded door. The three-bay nave has two-light plate tracery windows with quatrefoils, separated by buttresses. The west gable, which is steeply pitched and topped with a cross finial, has a gabled stone porch with a moulded two-centre arched doorway and cross-boarded double doors, flanked by lancet windows. The south side mirrors the north side, without the transept porch. A steep nave roof includes three louvred dormer vents and a diagonally-set square cupola with a tall pyramidal roof located near the west end.

The interior, which has not been formally inspected, contains a collar truss roof with diagonal braces and three registers of purlins, plus a chancel arch. An 1889 reredos, a marble font, and an octagonal pulpit are also present. Memorials within the church include one commemorating an accidental explosion in 1885. Stained glass memorials are largely from 1890. This church, together with the garrison church at Gillingham, represents a well-developed example of a combined church and school building, illustrating advanced barracks church architecture of the time.