Gateway And Two Flanking Guardrooms To Former Willems Barracks

ALDERSHOT SU 85 SE FARNBOROUGH ROAD (East side) 991-0/2/22 Gateway and 2 flanking guardrooms to former Willems Barracks 9.6.82

GV II

Guard rooms and gateway to cavalry barracks; disused. Dated 1856. Yellow stock brick with Portland stone and rubbed brick dressings, and slate roof Sinffic-depth plan guardrooms on opposite sides of paved area, connected by entrance gate. EXTERIOR: single-storey 5-bay guardrooms with 2-window street gables. 2 pairs of square piers with plinths and stone caps with shallow brackets, with mid C20 metal gates, and outer flat-headed wickets within segmental-arches containing stone panels, that to the left with VP, in raised letters surrounded by oak leaves over WEST CAVALRY BARRACKS, and to the right a similar panel inscribed ERECTED 1856. Short walls connect piers with the guardrooms, which have outer pilasters as the piers to coped gables, over rusticated segmental arched sunken panels containing 2 small seginental-arched 4/4-pane sashes. Opposite gables have brick dentil cornice, 3 sunken panels and a lunette. Inner sides of guardroorm have three 6/6-pane sashes, and panelled doors either side of the inner window, with a cast-iron verandah of 6 elliptical arches on thin octagonal posts xvith open spandrels. Rear of paved area closed by late C20 walls and railings. INTERIOR: not inspected. HISTORY: formed the entrance to the west or Willems Cavalry Barracks (demolished), a pair with the entrance to the Beaumont Barracks (qv). This was a wholly new concept in barracks planning, part of one of the original three permanent cavalry barracks built as the Wellington Lines at Aldershot. (Childerhouse T: Military Aldershot, the first fifty years: London: 1990-).

Listing NGR: SU8494650853