Former Weedon Barracks, Inner West Of Series Of Four Magazines In Magazine Enclosure

One of four paired magazines built between 1807 and 1811 within the Magazine Enclosure at Weedon Bec. The building is constructed of Flemish bond brick on a rendered plinth, with a chamfered sandstone top course and dentilled eaves courses to the side elevations. Stone-coped gables complete the structure. It has a rectangular plan, containing two vaulted chambers. The north and south elevations feature double gables, with segmental arches of gauged brick framing doorways in the centre of each. Original six-panelled beaded doors are present where original, although the doorways on the north elevation have been widened in the late 20th century. Above each doorway is a ventilator fitted with pulley-operated inner and outer shutters, with iron outer frames and timber inner frames. The side elevations have perforated wrought-iron plates to the ventilators, which are baffled internally. The interior features catenary arches to each chamber, with some arched access doorways between the chambers.

These magazines form part of a unique planned military-industrial complex, complete with its own defensible transport system and surrounding walls. The magazines, smaller in scale than the late 18th-century example at Priddy's Hard, Portsmouth, were nevertheless unsurpassed as a group until the magazine complex at Bull Point, Plymouth, was constructed in the 1850s. Catenary arches were first used at Tipnor in the 1790s, then at Colonel D'Arcy's magazine at Upnor. The use of traverses – earth blast walls sometimes faced in brick – is particularly innovative, and these traverses uniquely take on an architectural form. Drawings from 1816 are held in the Royal Engineers Library.