Barrack block A, Royal Artillery Barracks (also known as Le Cateau Barracks)

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TM 9924 NW 584/8/10010

COLCHESTER LE CATEAU ROAD Royal Artillery Barracks (also known as Le Cateau Barracks) Barrack block A

(Formerly listed as Cavalry Barracks A, Le Cateau Barracks, Colchester Garrison) GV II

Former Royal Artillery barracks, 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: red brick with yellow brick bands and stone lintels, slate roof and brick ridge stacks.

PLAN: rectangular single-depth plan with stores and officers' stables at the corners

EXTERIOR: two storeys; 6:4:6-window range. Similar front and rear elevations have coped end gables and patterned brick eaves, with projecting two window single-storey blocks at each end and a central pediment gable. Square stable windows extend along north side, with central segmental-arcfied double doors, the end blocks have left hand doors and a right-hand window, and a louvred oculus; 4/4-pane sashes to barrack rooms above. South side has a band of patterned brick below the stable windows, and three doorways separated by windows to the central gable; the upper floor are set back to form a balcony between the gable and end blocks, with diagonal iron railings.

INTERIOR: the stables, divided into two sections, have a central aisle between cast-iron posts dividing the stalls, supporting a brick jack-arch floor with ties between the joists; office and store rooms to each end. A central imperial stair leads up to the 22-man barrack rooms each side of the NCO's room.

HISTORY: Le Cateau is the last surviving example of the new layout of cavalry barracks developed at Aldershot in the 1850s. As a fireproof building with enhanced ventilation for the men, an advanced design of cavalry barracks for the day, though using the traditional plan of men's rooms over stables. Part of a group with the other barrack buildings, Le Cateau was the second permanent barracks built at Colchester after the adjoining Calvary Barracks which were built in 1862-64.

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

Listing NGR: TL9931524500