Former Cavalry Barracks, Christchurch Barracks

SZ1493 BARRACK ROAD (South West side )

748/4/442 Former Cavalry barracks, Christchurch Barracks 12.02.1976 II

Cavalry barrack, disuse. 1795, by J Johnson and J Sanders, architects to the Barrack Department. Red Flemish bond brick with rubbed brick dressings, brick ridge stacks and slate hipped roof. PLAN: double-depth former officers' section at one end, single-depth stables, and single-depth first floor soldiers' rooms. EXTERIOR: 2 storeys and attic; 9-window range. Symmetrical front and rear have end 2 windows set apart and slightly forward, rubbed brick heads to wide segmental-arched openings, taller on the ground floor, with tripartite windows with 6/6-pane sashes, most blocked (1994), and range of 4 flat-headed 4/4-pane sashes. Ground-floor openings altered. Flat-headed dormers with 8/8-pane sashes. SE principal officers' entrance end has a tall central round-arched recess with matching doorway, tall radial fanlight and double half-glazed doors, with flanking round-arched openings containing a left-hand 8/8-pane sash and right-hand triple 4/4-pane sashes, and first-floor segmental-arched openings with a left-hand tripartite 8/4-pane sash, right-hand triple 4/4-pane sashes, and smaller paired 4/4-pane sashes in the middle. NW end has smaller openings with ground-floor 6-pane lights, first-floor central double doors, right-hand blocked opening and left-hand 3-light casements; paired dormers. INTERIOR: not inspected, but noted as having cast-iron columns which doubled as stall dividers in the stables. HISTORY: originally with stables, kitchens, stores and offices on the ground floor and troops accommodation on the first and attic. The least altered of four surviving examples of cavalry barracks, of the type widely built in the first army barrack-building programme in England. (Bournemouth Local Studies Publications: Barker J: Christchurch Barracks: Bournemouth: 1984-: NO 674; Proceedings of the Dorset Historical & Archaeological Society: Breihan Professor J: Barracks in Dorset during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars: 1989-: 9-14.