Former Weedon Barracks, West Blast House Of Series Of Four In Magazine Enclosure

WEEDEN BEC

1732/16/193 BRIDGE STREET 29-APR-87 LOWER WEEDON (West side) FORMER WEEDON BARRACKS, WEST BLAST HOU SE OF SERIES OF FOUR IN MAGAZINE ENCLO SURE

GV II* Blast house, also known as a traverse. 1807-11. Flemish bond red brick with gauged brick arches, and with dentilled eaves to side walls; stone-coped kneelers to slate roof.

PLAN: Rectangular plan, aligned north-south, the central blast house being filled with earth and flanked at each end by a small office and Shifting Room, for changing into specialist magazine clothing. Only the southern sections of the latter survive, those to north having been demolished. EXTERIOR: Gabled south elevations have segmental arches over central doorway and flanking windows (originally beaded 6-panel door and 6/6-pane sash).

INTERIOR: blast house originally earth-filled, and retains pegged king post roof. The interiors of the office/Shifting Rooms originally had boarded or panelled walls. Part of a unique planned military-industrial complex, complete with its own defensible transport system and surrounding walls. Although the magazines (drawings of 1816 in Royal Engineers Library, W140 (D38), and later plans and drawings also archived there) are smaller in terms of their individual scale than the late 18th century example at Priddy's Hard opposite the naval dock at Portsmouth (listed grade I and like the Weedon examples built to the distinctive British double-vaulted plan), as a group they had no rival until the suite of traversed magazines were built at Bull Point, Plymouth, in the 1850s (Scheduled Ancient Monument). Catenary arches were first used at Tipnor in the 1790s and then Colonel D'Arcy's magazine at Upnor. The use of traverses makes the group highly innovatory in terms of its planning, blast walls of earth (sometimes faced in brick) being henceforth a characteristic features of magazine complexes. These traverses have also uniquely assumed an architectural form.

For full details of the site see description of Storehouse No 2.