Former Weedon Barracks, Inner East Of Series Of 4 Blast Houses In Magazine Enclosure

This is a blast house, part of a larger magazine complex, constructed between 1807 and 1811. It is located within the magazine enclosure and forms the inner east section of a series of four blast houses. The building is constructed of red brick in a Flemish bond pattern, with gauged brick arches and dentilled eaves to the side walls. It has stone-coped kneelers to a slate roof.

The plan is rectangular, running north-south. The central blast house was originally filled with earth and flanked by a small office and a Shifting Room on each side. Shifting Rooms are where personnel would change into specialist clothing required for working in the magazines. The northern Shifting Rooms have since been demolished, while the southern sections remain.

The south-facing gables feature segmental arches above a central doorway (originally containing a beaded six-panel door) and flanking windows (originally with six-pane sashes).

The interior of the blast house originally had an earth floor and retains a pegged king post roof. The interiors of the office and Shifting Rooms were originally lined with boarded or panelled walls.

This complex, which once included its own defensible transport system and surrounding walls, represents a unique planned military-industrial complex. While the individual magazines are smaller than the 18th-century example at Priddy's Hard, near Portsmouth, as a group, they were unmatched until the magazine complex at Bull Point, Plymouth, was built in the 1850s. The use of catenary arches, previously employed at Tipnor in the 1790s and later at Colonel D’Arcy’s magazine at Upnor, combined with the innovative incorporation of traverses—earth walls, sometimes brick-faced—makes this group highly significant in the design of magazine complexes. The traverses here also uniquely assumed an architectural form. Further details of the overall site can be found in the description for Storehouse No. 2.