Britannia Barracks (H.Q. Royal Anglian Regiment And Regimental Museum)

Britannia Barracks, now the headquarters of the Royal Anglian Regiment and a regimental museum, was built around 1886 by R E officers for the Inspector General of Fortifications. The building is constructed of brick with terracotta dressings, featuring ribbed brick stacks, cornices, and a tiled hipped roof in an Artisan Mannerist Revival style. It follows an axial double-depth plan.

The exterior is characterised by two storeys with an attic, and a nine-bay range with richly decorated, asymmetrical features across three principal elevations. Common features include cill bands, a ground-floor cornice, eaves band, rubbed brick segmental-arched windows with aprons and keys, raised surrounds to larger first-floor windows, and horned 4/4- and 6/6-pane sashes with small-paned overlights. The front section is divided into two parts; the left side has forward-projecting gables linked by a balustrade partially obscured by a mid-20th century single-storey service block, a central stair light with a 9/9-pane sash in a half dormer, paired windows to the left gable, and a canted oriel to the right gable. A right-and-four-window section includes gabled half dormers and a large, octagonal two-storey corner tower with narrow windows on each face and a leaded ogee dome with gabled dormers on alternating sides. The rear façade is also divided into two sections. The right-hand side is a symmetrical seven-bay range with projecting end gables, terracotta-tiled attic oculi, a central segmental-arched doorway with pilasters and a recessed six-panel door, a square light above with glazing bars, and a gabled dormer with pilasters. The left-hand side features external stacks, a doorway with small-paned overlights, tall first-floor windows, and gabled half dormers. The left-hand return has triple windows and a large half dormer with an enriched gable and oculus.

Inside, the original front entrance leads to an open well stair with a curtail and stick balusters, a large semi-circular arch to an axial corridor, good marble fireplaces, and panelled shutters.

The barracks represent a standard 60-bed pavilion plan regimental hospital, similar to those found at depots like Reading and Bodmin, but it is a unique and well-detailed example. Its design, applying Queen Anne style to barracks, is comparable to the work of Norman Shaw or J.J Stevenson from the same period; the octagonal tower originally housed baths. The building forms part of a group with the former barracks and officers’ mess, now HM Prison.