Gibraltar Barracks The Keep

BURY ST EDMUNDS

TL86 OUT RISBYGATE 639-1/13/513 (North side) 14/09/92 Gibraltar Barracks: The Keep (Formerly Listed as: OUT RISBYGATE (North side) Suffolk Regimental Museum)

GV II

Armoury, guard house and store for the Suffolk Regiment Localisation depot; now The Suffolk Regimental Museum. 1877, designed at the War Office by Major HC Seddon RE. Red brick laid in English Bond with white brick and stone dressings; flat roof. EXTERIOR: 3 storeys; two 4-storey towers, one at the north-west corner and a higher tower at the south-east corner; rounded corners to the south-west and north-east. 6 windows to each storey of the north and south facades, all cast-iron, small-paned, with shaped stone heads and projecting sills. A band of plain white brick runs at sill level on each storey, and a white brick band with guilloche ornament links the tops of all the windows. The walls are topped by a high crenellated parapet, stepped up slightly at the north-east corner. Both rounded corners have a small slit window. The 2 towers, which contain the stairs, are ornately treated, with a row of 3 narrow stepped windows to each storey. The top stage is marked by a course of white brick with guilloche ornament and has diaper patterning in blue headers. The projecting top is crenellated above a row of stone machicolations. INTERIOR: not inspected but reported to be fire-proof with open well stone stairs in the towers, and jack arch floors to iron columns. HISTORY: this is the only building which survives of a much larger depot complex. The Barracks ceased to be used in 1960, following the amalgamation of the Suffolk Regiment into the East Anglian Regiment in 1959. The remaining buildings were subsequently demolished. The keep was the characteristic building of the Localisation depots. These were part of the Cardwell reforms, which were intended to strengthen the ties between the regiment and its locality, to assist recruitment. As such the keep raised the local profile of the barracks, and provided an emblematic focus for the regiment. One of only nine surviving examples of this important symbolic building.

Listing NGR: TL8429664526