56B And 56D Annan Road, Gretna

Raymond Unwin and C M Crickmer (site architect) designed this building in 1917 as part of Gretna's wartime munitions worker housing. It is a symmetrical two-storey block of flats in the Edwardian Renaissance style, arranged in a U-plan with a long principal (north) front and single-storey ranges adjoining each outer south gable.

The north elevation features pedimented narrow central and wide outer gables with blocked cornices. The walls are constructed in red brick with some red ashlar dressings. The design includes prominent architectural detailing: the outer bays have shallow advanced ground-floor Venetian windows that are pedimented and architraved; the central main doorway windows are small-paned sashes set in shallow recessed vertical panels; an eaves course and mutule cornice run along the elevation; prominent axial chimney stacks rise prominently through the roof line, which is slated. The six-bay flanks also feature architraved doorways. The westernmost low wing now serves as the Tourist Information Office.

The building was originally the Police Barracks for Gretna village. It sits at a key junction within the village and is well-detailed with regularly spaced windows and simple classical detailing in the Venetian windows and pedimented door pieces.

Gretna was constructed between 1916 and 1918 to house workers at a nearby munitions factory that stretched for 9 miles along the Solway banks and produced Cordite explosives. Thousands of workers were brought in from around Britain and Ireland. The township was designed along Garden City lines by Raymond Unwin, with Courtnay M Crickmer as resident architect. It included housing, churches, a dance hall, school, and cinema. After the war the factory was dismantled.

Raymond Unwin (1863–1940) was one of the most important early twentieth-century British town planners, known particularly for Letchworth Garden City and Hampstead Garden Suburb, and advocated high standards of design for social housing. C M Crickmer (1879–1971) was a London-based architect who worked with Unwin at Letchworth and Hampstead Garden Suburb before being appointed resident architect for Gretna.