Keep And Attached Walls And Gateway, Brock Barracks

SU 67 SE READING OXFORD ROAD (south side) 934/16/621 Keep and attached walls and gateway, Brock barracks (Formerly Listed as: 22.12.75 OXFORD ROAD Brock Barracks: Keep and attached gatehouse)

GV II

Armoury, guardhouse and store, disused. Dated 1877, designed at the War Office by Major HC Seddon, RE, supervising engineer Major Flint RE. Red brick with terracotta bands and stone dressings, lateral stacks and asphalt roof Fortress Tudor Gothic Revival style. PLAN: square, with ground-floor guard room and detention cells, corner stairs, stores on upper floors. EXTERIOR: 4 storeys; 5-window range. A regular, square block with opposite square stair towers rising above the roof, other 2 corners chamfered with raised parapets, with terracotta sill and lintel bands, dentil eaves and crenellated parapet. Battered ground floor to a weathered band, narrow metal-framed windows with stone lintels, stepped in threes to the stair tower. A glazed iron verandah to the guard house beside the entrance. INTERIOR: not inspected, but noted as having a fire-proof construction of iron columns to jack arches and stone open well stairs, and a standard plan with guard house, cells and various stores. SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: attached dwarf walls with iron railings extend 15m to the SE and SW of the front tower, and the former main entrance gate attached to the NW corner has a stepped parapet to a segmental arch, wickets either side. HISTORY: the keep was a secure armoury, store, guard house and lock up, and the characteristic building of the Localisation depots. They were part of the Cardwell reforms, which redistributed barracks around the country to encourage local connections and assist recruitment. As such, the keep raised the local profile of the barracks, and provided an emblematic focus for the regiment. Only ten examples survive, that at Brock also part, with Bodmin, of one of the two most complete surviving depots. (Watson Colonel Sir HM: History of the Corps of Royal Engineers: Chatham. 1954).

Listing NGR: SU6929373761