Guard House

Guard house, 1861.

ARCHITECT: the design of the gunboat yard was by the Admiralty Works Department, under Colonel Greene, the Director of Works and William Scamp, the Deputy Director of Engineering and Architectural Works. Plans by Scamp identify him as the specific designer of the guard house and police barracks. The brickwork was contracted to Messrs Rigby of London.

MATERIALS: the building is constructed from red brick laid in Flemish bond, with limestone dressings.

PLAN: the guard house and police barracks stand just within the main, north-east entrance to the gunboat yard; the guard house is the northern of the two. In plan they were originally an approximate mirror image of each other, each roughly square and with a central courtyard.

EXTERIOR: the front elevation of the single-storey building is a colonnade of eight bays with round arches and square piers. The piers have dressed stone bases and springers to the arches. There is a stone band to the base of the parapet. The hipped roofs are just visible behind, as are chimneystacks with brick detailing at their heads. Windows around both structures have round or segmental-arch brick heads and stone cills.

Six of the colonnade archways on the northern block have been infilled with brick and small windows as part of a later modification.

INTERIOR: not inspected.