Keep And Attached Walls And Gateway, Brock Barracks

This building is an armoury, guardhouse, and store, dating to 1877. It was designed by Major HC Seddon, RE, of the War Office, with Major Flint RE as supervising engineer, and is part of Brock Barracks near Reading. The structure is built of red brick with terracotta banding and stone dressings, featuring lateral stacks and an asphalt roof in a Fortress Tudor Gothic Revival style.

The building is square in plan, with ground-floor guard rooms and detention cells, corner staircases, and storage spaces on the upper floors. The exterior is four storeys high and features a five-window range. It is a regular square block with square stair towers rising above the roofline. Two corners are chamfered, featuring raised parapets. The building has terracotta sill and lintel bands, dentil eaves, and a crenellated parapet. The ground floor is battered up to a weathered band, and contains narrow, metal-framed windows with stone lintels, stepped in threes to the stair towers. A glazed iron verandah is located beside the entrance to the guardhouse.

The interior, which has not been inspected, is noted for its fire-proof construction using iron columns supporting jack arches, and featuring a stone open-well staircase, with a standard plan including a guardhouse, cells, and various storage areas.

Attached dwarf walls with iron railings extend 15 metres to the southeast and southwest of the front tower. Attached to the northwest corner is a former main entrance gate with a stepped parapet over a segmental arch, with wickets on either side.

The keep served as a secure armoury, store, guardhouse, and lock-up, and exemplifies the design of Localisation depots, which were part of the Cardwell reforms designed to redistribute barracks and assist recruitment. The keep served to raise the local profile of the barracks and provided an emblematic focus for the regiment. It is one of only ten surviving examples, with Brock Barracks and Bodmin forming one of the two most complete surviving depots.