The Barracks

TQ 7570 SE FRINDSBURY EXTRA HIGH STREET, Upnor (North side) 1797/15/52 The Barracks, Upnor Castle 14.11.1986

GV I

Barracks, now store and museum. 1717-18, for the Board of Ordnance. Red English bond brick with ridge and gable stacks, and tiled valley roof Double-depth plan, divided into 3 separate sections by spine and central rear transverse walls. EXTERIOR: 3 storeys and attic; 5-window range. Symmetrical front has a plinth, rusticated brick quoins to a second floor cornice, attic with wooden eaves cornice, parapet and paired, coped gables. Flat-roofed porch with cornice and parapet, steps up to round-arched doorways each side, a small segmental-arched window in the front, and a segmental-arched doorway with panelled double doors; segmental-arched 6/6-pane sashes and smaller second-floor windows, the outer ones paired with a lead downpipe and dated hopper between. Left-hand double basement doors in the plinth. Cornices extend to returns with paired gables, 2 attic sashes to the front gable and 2 oculi to the rear, each with a doorway to the rear. The rear left-hand gable has a weather vane. INTERIOR: entrance lobby to a dogleg stair with uncut string and plain rail to a first-floor landing with trap door; the rear sections each have dogleg stairs up from the side entrances; collar truss roof with through purlins. Cast-iron C19 fireplaces, and wooden clothes racks in former bedrooms. HISTORY: accommodated the garrison for Upnor Castle (qv), from 1668 one of the largest powder stores in the country. In the early C19 it housed 2 officers in the front section, and 64 soldiers in the rear. One of the first purpose-built barracks in England, in the style associated with Hawksmoor and the Ordnance Board at this time, and part of a Erne group with the Castle. (English Heritage Handbook: Saunders A D: Upnor Castle, Kent: London: 1985-: 15).

Listing NGR: TQ7581070502