Former Weedon Barracks, Large Magazine to West of the Series of Four Magazines in Magazine Enclosure

This is a large magazine, constructed around 1857, forming part of the former Weedon Barracks. It stands to the west of a group of four magazines within a magazine enclosure. The building is built of English bond red brick with gabled Welsh slate roofs, featuring moulded corbels to the kneelers of coped gables. Stepped eaves are present on the side elevations. The plan incorporates four vaulted chambers and is separated from the earlier magazine buildings by an earth traverse constructed in the same date.

The north elevation has four segmental arches where doorways once stood, each above which is a ventilator with pulley-operated inner and outer shutters; the outer frames are of iron, the inner of timber. The south elevation is similar, but the doorways were widened in the late 20th century. The side elevations feature perforated wrought-iron plates to the ventilators, which are baffled internally. The interior reveals catenary arches to each chamber, with inserted openings to what were originally blind openings between the chambers.

This magazine is part of a distinctive, planned military-industrial complex and no other group of magazines resembles it until the complex at Bull Point, Plymouth. The catenary arches were first used at Tipnor in the 1790s and subsequently at Colonel D'Arcy’s magazine at Upnor. The use of traverses for blast protection was innovative, a feature that would become characteristic of magazines after this date, uniquely shaped by architectural considerations. Drawings relating to the magazine are held in the Royal Engineers Library.