Keep And Attached Gateway, Former Stoughton Barracks

SU 95 SE GUILDFORD STOUGHTON ROAD (East side), Stoughton 1688/1/10007 Keep and attached gateway, Former Stoughton Barracks

GV II

Armoury , guard house and store, and attached gateway, now flats. Dated 1876, designed at the War Office by Major HC Seddon RE; converted 1994. Brick with Portland ashlar, terracotta and yellow brick dressings, lateral stacks and flat asphalt roof Fortress Tudor Gothic Revival style. PLAN: Square plan with left and rear right corner stair towers. EXTERIOR: 4 storeys; 3:3:1-window range. Battered ground floor to moulded drip mould, cill and impost bands of terracotta to cornice and crenellated parapet, raised to the 1-window splayed corners; taller projecting square towers have similar decoration, and pseudo machicolation. Chan1fered heads and cills to metal-framed windows, 3-window side and rear ranges, the towers have stepped, glazed stair loops. The right-hand side has a cast-iron verandah to the former guard house. INTERIOR: not inspected but reported to have a fire-proof construction of jack-arches and cast-iron columns, and stone open-well stairs in the towers. SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: attached front right-hand gateway set in a crow-stepped gable with ashlar-coping and yellow brick side panels, a moulded segmental archway with swept iron spear-headed double gates, raised lozenge panels inscribed 18 VR 76, and flanking flat-headed wickets with spear-headed iron gates. HISTORY: formerly with a ground-floor guard room and fire engine garage, and gun and clothing stores on the upper floors. The keep was a secure armoury, store, guard house and lock up, and the characteristic building of the Localisation depots. These were part of the Cardwell reforms, which redistributed barracks around the country to encourage local connections and assist recruitment. As such they keep raised the local profile of the barracks, and provided an emblematic focus for the regiment. Only ten surviving examples of this important symbolic building. Though converted, Stoughton 'keep' remains a significant local landmark, as its designers intended, and a building of considerable historic interest. (PSA Drawing Collection, NMR: ALD/1265-1266; The Buildings of England: Pevsner N: Surrey: London: 1971-: 280; SAVE Britain's Heritage: Deserted Bastions, Historic Naval and Military Architecture: London: 1993-: 83; Watson Colonel Sir H M: History of the Corps of Royal Engineers: Chatham: 1954-: 157-160).

Listing NGR: SU9842551632