Former Officers' Quarters, Royal Artillery Barracks (also known as Le Cateau Barracks)

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TM 9924 NW 584/8/10013

COLCHESTER LE CATEAU ROAD Royal Artillery Barracks (also known as Le Cateau Barracks) Former Officers' Quarters

(Formerly listed as Former Officers' Quarters, Le Cateau Barracks, Colchester Garrison, LE CATEAU ROAD) GV II

Former officers' quarters, latterly sergeant's mess, built in 1874-75 to a design by Lieutenant General Charles Brisbane Ewart RE, Deputy Director of Works for Barracks at the War Office

MATERIALS: brick with yellow brick and stone dressings, brick ridge stacks and a slate roof.

PLAN: single-depth axial plan.

EXTERIOR: two-storey, 11:4:11-window range. Symmetrical front has yellow brick band over the ground floor windows, yellow brick moulded brick eaves cornice, and taller central gable set forward. Gabled porches on moulded kneelers to round-arched doorways with fanlight and two-panel, two-light doors, either side of the central gable and four bays form the ends; windows with moulded lintels to 6/6-pane sashes, round-arched first floor windows to central gable, beneath an oculus. Similar rear with two storey porches and C20 single-storey service blocks.

INTERIOR: not inspected.

HISTORY: Le Cateau is the last surviving example of the new layout of cavalry barracks developed at Aldershot in the 1850s. Part of a group with the other barrack buildings, Le Cateau was the second permanent barracks built at Colchester following the construction of the adjoining Calvary Barracks in 1862-64. Originally at the head of two parallel rows each of three cavalry barracks each side; two survive, Blocks A and B (listed Grade II). Included as the centre piece of the original layout, and as part of a group with the rest of the complex.

SOURCES: Dietz P: Garrison: Ten Military Towns: London: 1986-: 3; PSA Drawings Collection, NMR, Swindon: CTR 130-158. Listing NGR: TL9934724540